Everybody Knows Your Name (3 page)

A few months ago my mom and I were driving to the beach and she had her phone's camera on record, which I didn't know. So I had my head tipped against the window and I was belting out Beyoncé's song “Halo,” because my mom always has the radio on a top 40 station and that's what was on. She says it keeps her current, in this way that makes it sound like the Black Eyed Peas deliver her the world news.

She'd already been trying to get on
The
Real Housewives of Orange County
for a few years. The producers had brought her in for three different interviews, and they'd even come by to see our house. My mom showed them what she looked like coming down what she called our “grand staircase.” But the interest never turned into anything.

When my mom realized she hadn't gotten on the show, first she said that she knew it was because she was too stable. “It's hard to make me cry,” she told me, “and people can tell that about a person.”

Then she got more depressed about how close she'd come, and she started saying that it was because she didn't have a husband or at least a steady boyfriend.

“But you had Dad,” I said, and she shot me a look like I'd gone crazy. Dad died when I was eleven, but he'd left her when I was ten, and so she liked to act like he'd never mattered.

Next thing you know, she was secretly taping me. Then a few weeks ago she was jumping up and down in the kitchen after our phone rang.

“You're on the cast!” she shouted, and I said, “Of what?” and she just said, “Oh my God, you're one of the ten!” and I said, “Ten who?” and we went back and forth like that for at least a couple of minutes before she finally calmed down enough to explain to me what she'd done.

“You're going to be famous,” was the last thing she said to me before I went to bed that night. “Even if it's just for a minute.”

But being famous is not really what I'm concerned about. What I want is to get out from under the weight of my current existence. It's not that my life is so terrible beyond certain sadnesses. My dad being gone. Scott at a distance. The loneliness I feel, especially in the presence of other people.

It's not that stuff. It's me. I'm sick of myself. I'm sick of looking out from this head. Sometimes I imagine it like my own perspective is a concrete slab that flattened me down. I mean, it didn't just pin me like a bug—it trampled me:
That's who you are. Don't move
. I did it to myself, and my understanding just adds that much more heaviness. I cemented myself somehow, and now I can't see myself any differently.

But I had the realization that going on a TV show could be so disorienting that I'd forget what (I've come to believe) I'm incapable of. Police officers had an assembly at our school last year to talk about teenagers on drugs. One officer said that he'd seen a kid on PCP land a four-story jump like a cat. This kid just thought he could do it. And it worked for him! Not that I'm looking to acquire a drug problem, but I think this show could take my head between its hands and shake it up. I want to be a little dizzy. I want to give up my old securities.

I pick up the phone on the desk and dial Scott's cell number. I have done this way too much.

“Hello?” he answers, sounding groggy. I can practically hear him wrinkling his eyebrows together.

“Hey,” I say.

“Where are you, Tiny? What number is this?” he asks.

“In a hotel room in downtown LA. Don't ask.” I stare at a drop of water on the other side of the window. “Where are you?”

“At this guy's house in Malibu, in a sleeping bag on his living room floor. We're getting up early to hit the water. You and me aren't that far away right now.”

I'm going to be outgoing. I'm going to have energy. I'm going to entertain. I'm going to picture all those people out there boogie boarding naked, even picture their genitals chafing against the plastic foam, and I'm going to be something new to them. And then maybe I can be new again to myself too.

I say, “I called to ask you to stop calling me.”

“Whoa,” Scott says. “What?”

My mom opens the curtain with a luxurious robe on and her hair wrapped in a big towel. “Is that the producers?” she asks breathlessly, like she's just gone for a swim instead of a shower. “Have they been waiting a long time?”

“What?” Scott is saying.

“So, no more calls. I'm serious. I've got to go,” I tell him, and then I hang up the phone.

I'd never seen a desert before yesterday, and now it feels like I'll never see the end of this one. My old Triumph motorcycle has already made it a thousand miles farther than I thought it would. If I break down out here in this wasteland, I'm picturing my road trip turning into an episode of
I Shouldn't Be Alive
, me drinking water out of cactuses, eating scorpions like they're corn chips. Still, there's one thing I definitely like about the desert: it's a
long
way from home.

Home is Calumet, Arkansas. My tiny white three-room shack (I could call it a house, but I'd be lying) so close to the railroad tracks that it sounds like the train rolls straight through my bedroom at night. I never minded that so much, though, because at least I had the place to myself. Compared to the mayhem I dealt with when I still lived with my family, a rumbling train sounded like a lullaby. Getting out of their house was the second best thing that's ever happened to me.

The best? When the producers from
Spotlight
called at the music store a few weeks ago to tell me they wanted me on the show.

I hadn't told anyone that I was going for it. I just borrowed a video camera and recorded myself singing “The Weight” by the Band out on the back porch, only because that's a song I've been singing since I can first remember. When I sent that entry, it seemed like I might as well be throwing my audition into a black hole. But somehow a few months later there was this lady on the other end of the line saying, “We love your voice . . . totally genuine . . . That's what America's about.”

After I left work, I walked in a daze until I looked up to find myself at the highway on the edge of town. The sun was going down. The cicadas chirping in the trees, the smell of someone barbequing dinner, the sunset reflecting off the metal grain silos—everything was so clear and bright and loud. Same old town, nothing had changed, but everything felt different.

I'd always wanted to figure a way out of this town, but I never thought today would be the day. Some strange voice on the end of the phone wasn't enough to make it seem real. Music is all I'm really good at, so I daydreamed I could play my way out. But I'd never got any further than playing for six drunks at a West Memphis bar. There isn't exactly a thriving music scene down here.

And before that, as a kid, I even dreamed that I might grow up to try out for a TV singing competition, but when I did get older, I never could afford to travel to a major city for the auditions. Then the last few years that whole
American Idol
thing started to seem on its way down. I read that all those shows' ratings were dropping. It truly seemed like I'd missed my chance, since I had no idea how an ordinary person gets his foot in the door.

Then I saw the ads for
Spotlight
, a new show coming in the fall and looking for talent. All you had to do was send in a video.

I figured, what did I have to lose?

I've got only two hundred miles to go, when a blast of desert wind slams into my motorcycle, taking control away from me. I feel my stomach drop as adrenaline shoots through my bloodstream. I'm almost off the road before I push hard on my left handlebar to swerve, straightening out. Breathing again, I tell myself,
Okay, you're still upright.
Fifteen hundred miles is a long way on a motorcycle.

It would have been easier to fly, but my free flight to Los Angeles left without me two nights ago. When the producers sent me the ticket, there was nothing in the world that would have stopped me from getting on that flight . . . well, nothing except being handcuffed in the backseat of a police car while my plane was taking off.

I'd made a bad mistake: I'd gone by my parents' house to try to get my grandfather's guitar, the Telecaster he'd left to me that had magically disappeared the day I moved out.

See, my family has always had a real close relationship with local law enforcement. The county jail has basically been our vacation home over the years; someone or another was always “away” for a stretch. The best way you can understand my family is to think of one of those flash floods that come in the summer, sweeping up everything they touch and leaving a ton of debris behind.

When I got to my family's house and saw they were having a party, I should have just turned right around. Out front, beat-up cars were parked all over the lawn. Drunk guys were shouting and shoving each other around. Couples were making out in the shadows. Once I got inside, I found the living room full of people drinking and dancing to Jay-Z. You'd be surprised how much rednecks like hip-hop.

I spotted my dad on the couch, smoking weed out of a beer can with a hole cut in it. I know it ain't normal, but my family parties together, old and young.

“Hey, John,” I said. My dad barely looked at me. We hadn't spoken since I'd gotten that judge to emancipate me six months earlier. John had signed off on it, but he'd taken the whole thing as a personal insult that he wasn't interested in letting go.

“What do you want?” He passed the beer-can pipe to a blonde girl in a black sleeveless T-shirt sitting next to him. She gave me a glassed-over look from behind a piece of greasy hair. I think she was a friend of my cousin.

“Where is everybody?”

“Your mom's at the casino. Your brother's in the kitchen.”

“You know where the Telecaster is?”

John just shrugged. “You should ask your brother about that.”

I pushed my way through and found my older brother, Cody, trying to light pure grain alcohol on fire while blowing it out of his mouth like a dragon. An alcoholic dragon.

“Well, hell, look who it is,” he slurred, punching me in the arm. “The prodigal son or long-lost brother. Or whatever.” Then he gave me a half hug, half headlock. “We're still brothers right? What did the judge say on that subject?”

“We're still brothers. Nothing I can do about that,” I said.

I didn't know how Cody was going to feel about this TV thing. People would have told you he was the musician in the family since he'd been playing in bands on and off for years. His band even opened for Lynyrd Skynyrd once, like, three years ago when they played in Little Rock. Sometimes we used to play together at bars—called ourselves the Buckley Brothers. But all that ended when I moved out.

Some sketchy guy stepped in between us then and pushed a twenty-dollar bill at Cody, who pulled a couple of pills out of his front shirt pocket and dropped them into the guy's hand.

You know how some people have a family business that everyone is supposed to pitch in and help out with? Well, this is ours. Cops in Calumet claim if they could get rid of all the Buckleys, the crime rate would drop at least 80 percent overnight.

“I'm thinking about kicking you out of the band,” my brother said, eyeing me to see if I was going to argue that there wasn't a band to be kicked out of anymore. “You haven't been to practice in months. You too good for your family now?” As the music in the living room switched from hip-hop to country, my sister, Sissy, bounced in through the kitchen door.

“Baby Ford,” she said, hugging me. She calls me Baby even though she's only twenty-one. Sissy's good-looking, and that fools people because if you cross her, she'll put a screwdriver in your leg. Ask my uncle James about that—he's still got a limp.

“Dad said you were here. What are you doing, huh?” she asked, looking curious. “You didn't come to party.”

“Ford's decided to crawl back and beg for our forgiveness for disowning us,” Cody said.

“Not exactly,” I said. And then, suddenly feeling embarrassed, I just went ahead and came out with it. “I'm gonna be on this show called
Spotlight
.”

“What are you talking about?” Sissy asked.

“You heard me. They liked my singing.”

“You're gonna be on TV?” Sissy asked, really not absorbing this information.

“I'm flying out tonight.”

“Well, shit, why didn't you tell me?” Cody wanted to know, a nerve-wracking smile coming across his face. “Let me get my stuff and let's go, man.”

I made sure I caught his eye because sometimes Cody will dodge you and pretend he doesn't understand your meaning. “Just me, Cody. It's not like a band thing.”

“How you supposed to do this without me? I taught you everything you know about music.”

“I'm just gonna do my best, I guess,” I told him. “Anyway I gotta go. I came by to get my Telecaster.”

I could practically hear Cody's bad side clicking on in his brain. “Well, that's gonna be difficult. I sold that old guitar to Marcus at the pawn shop.”

I stopped and looked at him. “You sold it? That's my guitar, Cody.”

“Family guitar, really. And you left the family, if I remember.”

“Grampa left it to me, and I want it back.” I ordered myself not to let my hands curl into fists. Because that's what Cody wanted. Because it would mean I was still like them.

“Yeah. And, well, I want to hook up with Taylor Swift, but you don't always get what you want, do you?”

We glared at each other for a minute. His eyes had that look they got when he was making someone miserable—he was enjoying himself. He likes to poke at people, find their weak spots. What I wanted to do was leave. I swear that's what I was hoping for myself. But what I did instead was hit him.

He put me on the floor, fast as lightning. Pinned me down and sat on top of me. Then he hit me on the side of the head with his open hand.

“When are you gonna learn you'll never whip your big brother?”

Sissy was pulling him off me when some tattooed dude appeared in the doorway and yelled, “Cops!”

“Shit!” Cody jumped up and pulled a paper bag full of pills out from its hiding place under the kitchen sink. He seemed like he was going to bolt right that second, but then he reached down and pulled me up. “Don't you have a plane to catch?” he asked, finally looking at me straight on.

We ran out the back door. People were scattering out every exit like cockroaches when you turn on the light. Cockroaches wearing a whole lot of denim.

Out in the backyard you could see the blue lights flashing and the dark shapes of people making for the woods. Rounding the corner of the house, wouldn't you know? I ran right into the outstretched arm of a cop. My back hit the ground first, knocking the breath out of me.

A half hour later I was still in the back of the cop car, wrists throbbing from the handcuffs digging into them. The door opened. “Hop on in there,” ordered the cop who'd clotheslined me. I recognized him from a few years ahead of Cody in school—a short, bulky guy named Steve Greggs. He had Cody in handcuffs.

“Oh, hell no,” Cody said when he saw me in the car. He twisted to talk to Steve. “Damn it, Greggs, you let my brother go. He don't even live here.” Steve tried to put Cody in the car, but Cody definitely wasn't making it easy.

“He's got a plane to catch, you idiot! To Hollywood, you hear? He's gonna sing on TV. If you mess this up for him, I swear, I'll take it out on your ass, Greggs. You were an asshole in high school, and you're still an asshole. Maybe this is your chance to turn that around.”

“Shut up, Cody,” said Greggs, pushing my brother in next to me. “Things have changed a little since high school.”

“Yeah, now you've got a gun instead of a baseball bat.”

“Forget it, man. I think you helped me enough tonight already,” I told Cody. His ranting was only making things worse.

Greggs slammed the door on us, then slid into the front seat, taking his time with checking out his mustache stubble in the mirror, just to piss off my brother.

“Listen, you dumb redneck! My brother has places to be!” Cody yelled through the metal grate.

“Bullshit,” Greggs said. “You Buckleys are trash, always have been. Only places y'all are going are to the state pen in Jacksonville or into the ground.”

My brother kept trying to make eye contact with me on the way to the jail, but I didn't want to look at him. I felt hot angry tears behind my eyes, and a terrible frustration. I couldn't believe that I'd blown this chance. It seemed to me that Greggs must be right: failure was in my genes.

It was just before dawn when I was bailed out by Leander, who was waiting for me when I stepped outside. In the end I was only charged with disturbing the peace. I guess my brother had managed to hide the evidence before they caught him, but making me miss the flight—they couldn't have punished me any worse.

During the night, part of me had almost felt relieved that the whole TV thing was over with. I told myself I'd probably just have made a fool of myself anyway. But when I saw Leander, the relief went away and then the guilt rushed in. Leander was the only person who'd ever really seen anything in me. He'd given me my job, he'd rented me my house for almost nothing, and he'd taught me a lot about music.

“I missed my flight,” I said.

Leander nodded. He's a guy who looks like he should have a beard. It's confusing that he doesn't. “I noticed.”

“Thanks for bailing me out.”

It felt bad to have him pick me up at jail. A few years before, Leander had caught me breaking into his store, but he'd ended up dropping the charges on the condition that I work for him to pay for the damage. Eventually it turned into a full-time job, helping around the store and teaching guitar lessons.

I don't know what he saw in me that no one else did. I mean, my teachers used to tell me I was smart and they'd point to my good scores when I happened to be in school on the day of one of those state aptitude tests, but they also said I didn't apply myself. I did apply myself, but it was to screwing up. And trying to fit in at home. None of that mixed well with school, and I finally just dropped out sophomore year. That didn't seem to matter much to anybody.

Anyway, Leander sort of started looking out for me. He was more like a parent than my own parents ever were. He'd buy me meals at the diner, his way of making sure I was eating real food and not just living on cold Pop-Tarts and SpaghettiOs. He talked me into working toward getting my GED. It was when I started going to his AA meetings with him, when I first heard him talk about his family—how his kids don't speak to him anymore—that I started thinking he was trying to make up for past mistakes by helping me out. At first I went to the meetings for the free doughnuts, but then because the people there knew where I was coming from. Most of them had things much worse.

My family found my sobriety really irritating. They all thought I was judging them or something. I found out that if you're going to be around tweakers all the time, you kind of need to be drunk. And I also found out that I really didn't have much of a desire to get loaded once I broke off from the crowd. I stopped needing the meetings. But I just kept to myself more, kept my door closed during parties, and that was working out okay until someone almost blew my head off.

I was sitting on my bed during yet another party when a bullet tore through my wall and whizzed by my ear like an angry wasp. It stopped in my little practice amplifier. Turns out, some idiot was showing off his new .45 in the living room and accidently fired it while pretending he was a gunslinger. Cody couldn't stop laughing about the look on my face. I couldn't stop thinking about how stupid it would have been for my whole life to come down to being shot through the skull by some drunk dumbass. That's when I decided I wanted out.

Leander helped me set up the emancipation. Talked to my parents about signing off, telling them it would be better all around. They had never heard of emancipation, and they mostly saw it as me thinking I was too good for them. But in the end they signed off, because what difference did it really make? The judge determined that it was in my best interest and that I'd proved to be self-sufficient. And just like that, I was a seventeen-year-old legal adult and could live on my own.

We'd been driving in Leander's Cadillac for a while before he said anything else. “So that's it, then?”

“I guess so.”

“What's your plan? Work in my store for the rest of your life?”

“What's wrong with that?”

“Nothing
wrong
with it. I like having you there. It's fine with me if you want to spend the next twenty years giving boogery kids guitar lessons and spending your lunchtimes eating with an old man.”

“Good, because that's what I want to do,” I said, even though it felt bad to say.

Leander braked at a stop sign, but then he didn't get going again. We just sat there. “Now that I'm old, I look back on my younger self, and I realize the number of chances a person gets to change their life—I mean really change it—there ain't many. And most times, it ain't even any.”