1.
The first night that Reed went crazy I was sitting in the front room of his house and looking at a book. Earlier that night he’d gone into his bedroom with Lilly, his favorite Texas hooker, and as I sat there I could hear alternately his sobs and her soft consolations coming from behind the door. The book I was looking at was “The Fire Next Time,” by James Baldwin. I didn’t know Baldwin that well but I knew the Biblical reference. Also there was an old hill-country song that used it – “there won’t be water, but fire next time” – that my uncle used to sing while I accompanied him on the banjo or did my two-step. This was back when I was little and winning all those contents. “It won’t be water, but fire next time” refers to the fact that, while once God destroyed the world with a flood, the next time He’ll do it with fire. Reed took this to refer to nuclear war, while I thought it meant the Holy Spirit and that maybe it was a good, redemptive kind of destruction being prophesied. At least that’s what I thought when my uncle used to sing that song and I haven’t had occasion to revise my opinion.
Reed, he can carry on like a regular Bible-thumper sometimes but wasn’t living like one when I knew him. Of course he’s famous for his contradictions, but when you spend as much time with him as I have they start to seem more apparent than real. What’s consistent through all his “phases and stages,” as Willie Nelson would say, is a sense of urgency and a feeling that something is always at stake.
“You ramble too much, Nash,” my mama used to say, and she was right. She was talking about my wandering though, not my mouth, since most of the time I’m pretty quiet. But they want me to write about Reed and there’s a lot to say and a lot I can’t decide whether to say or not. Indecision brings me right back to the story because that night, the first night that Reed went crazy, I really couldn’t decide what to do. Part of me wanted to get out of the house and head back to the bar but part of me wanted to stay in case Reed needed to talk later on. He never subjected me to his personal craziness but often said how grateful he was that I was usually there when it passed. And I usually was.
I don’t know where he met Lilly but periodically he would call her up. Often he’d just take her into Fort Worth and blow hundreds of dollars on her and wouldn’t spend the night with her at all. It could be hard to tell if he was her client, her buddy or her boyfriend. I usually left them alone though one night she found out about all the dancing contests and said, “Ooooooh, you were THAT boy!” and then made me teach her some steps while Reed drank whiskey and laughed.
Anyway, this night he’d called her and she’d come straight over and we’d all three of us played horseshoes in the backyard and drank a lot of beer. Eventually Reed and Lilly had begun to get pretty wild, doing this routine they had that always started with Lilly asking him to marry her.
“I can’t marry you, Lilly,” he’d say in that voice of his. A lot of people who’ve only read his books or seen his movies or paintings or maybe heard him sing don’t know that he spoke with a kind of European accent, a holdover from his early childhood. If you want to know more about that you should read his autobiography. I haven’t yet but I’m fixing to.
“But why, honey?” Lilly would whine.
“Because you’re a whore,” Reed would reply. Then she’d act all sulky and he’d say something nice like this night he put his arm around her and said, “You know I’m teasing. You’re a magnificent woman and a lady of the highest caliber. Isn’t that right, Nash?”
“I think Lilly’s a real peach,” I said.
“See, honey, Nash likes you.” He winked over at me just before she kicked him in the shins. It was always hard to tell how serious they were when they got like this. Eventually I decided to walk into town and play some pool and when I got back the fiasco was going on in the bedroom. I thought about taking my bedroll outside and going to sleep but doubted I could sleep just then. At that point I was living with Reed and trying to figure out my next move in life. But here was this situation that had to be dealt with.
Before I could decide what to do the bedroom door opened and out came Reed. He didn’t have a shirt on and his pants were unbuckled with his belt dangling down his leg. His eyes were all red from crying. He scratched his messed-up hair and looked absently out the window.
“There any beer left, Nash?” he asked.
“Nah, Reed. We drank it,” I said.
Reed had a seat on the wood floor in front of me. He put one foot on his lap and started rubbing it.
“Nash, I need to ask you a sort of important question and I want you to be totally honest.”
“Sure, buddy,” I said.
Reed got up and walked over to me and crouched down with his hands on his knees so his face was level with mine. He squinted his eyes and spoke in a hushed voice like we were co-conspirators in something.
“Is that Deliah in there, Nash?” he asked.
“Hell, Reed,” I said, “that’s Lilly. You know that.”
He looked shattered. “So it’s not Deliah.”
“Uh, no. It ain’t Deliah, Reed,” I said.
Reed nodded slowly. Then he straightened up and walked into the kitchen. I could hear glass clanking together and he came back with his arms full of our empty beer bottles.
“Thanks, Nash,” he said as he passed me. He pushed open the screen door with his foot and went outside. In about five seconds I heard the first bottle break against the side of the house.
“Fuck!” he yelled as it hit.
That was the first night that Reed went crazy.
2.
The second night was a whole different proposition. Me and Reed were at the bar with Juanita, this Tejano girl I was seeing. We were drinking beer and tequila, Juanita out-drinking both of us without seeming drunk. Now and then she’d get up and walk over to the juke and all eyes in the bar would suddenly turn to watch her sway in that pretty blue dress.
One of these times when she was over there putting on one of her Spanish songs Reed lifted his bottle to me and said, “Cheers, Nash. You done good.”
“Aw hell, she ain’t mine,” I said. “We’re just sort of seeing each other.”
Reed nodded slowly as Juanita came swaying back. “What are you boys looking at?” she said as she slid onto her stool.
“Nothing,” we replied in unison. We did that sometimes. It came from writing so many songs together, I think. When you write songs with someone you get to know their subconscious too. This was after “Kicking the Gift Horse in the Mouth” had come out and just before the release of “Armadillo Duty,” so we had a lot of songs under our collective belt.
I’d been noticing some chemistry between Reed and Juanita all night, but I wasn’t worried. First of all, like I told Reed, I didn’t lay any claim to her. Me and Diego, her daddy, had started up a little pottery business back in Fort Worth, and he’d encouraged me to take his daughter out a few times. But I wasn’t about to marry her and Lord knows I wasn’t her only boyfriend. Second of all, when it comes to Reed and women, sometimes you just have to stand back and let things happen.
The drinks kept coming and some more folks came in. This was back when Bascom was still tending bar and I noticed him getting a little nervous as he always did when the bar got crowded. Plus there was an unfamiliar face or two and he didn’t much care for that unless someone introduced them as a friend or a cousin or whatnot. Eventually I had to go to the bathroom. I slipped through the crowd to the back of the room and when I got back Reed and Juanita were gone. I walked down the bar till I was across from Bascom. He was polishing a glass and scowling at his reflection.
“Hey Bascom,” I said. “Did you see what happened to Reed and Juanita?”
“Reed and who?” he said.
“Juanita is the little Mexican gal was in here with us. I know her daddy.”
“All right,” he said. He got back to polishing the glass.
“Bascom?”
He looked up again. “Yeah?”
“What happened to them, man?”
“They up and left,” he said.
“They pay for their drinks?” I asked.
Bascom nodded. “That boy tips good.”
“Thanks, Bascom,” I said. I got up and headed toward the front door. Luther was playing darts and he gave me the evil eye. That made him miss his shot, which goes to show that you can’t just go around looking askance at people. Outside the sky was scattered with countless stars and a warm dry wind was blowing in from the east. The parking lot had been nearly empty when we came in but now was full of all types of vehicles. I was looking for my car, a slightly stricken ’74 Chevy that Reed had taken to calling “The Hammer of the Goddess,” for reasons known only to him. I spied it by the road and saw what I half-expected to see: Juanita’s dark skin pressed up against the backseat glass.
People ask sometimes how Reed was so successful with women. I can’t really say. In “Reed: a Biography in Pictures,” the writer suggests that it was his “attractive mix of intelligence, roguish good-looks, and frequent bouts of overwhelming existential despair.” I guess that sounds about right. Also he knew how to make people feel important, women especially. It wasn’t just an act, either. On the other hand, some women were just after his money. Not all or even most, but some. Of course Reed didn’t live like he had a lot of money but it was well known that he did. I’m not saying Juanita was a gold-digger, but I’m not saying she wasn’t. Later she would steal twenty bucks from me in Phoenix.
I went inside and ordered another beer. The bar was pretty full so I scouted around for a seat at a table. Over in the corner beneath the gold record me and Reed had hung up sat a pretty blond lady with a few of her girlfriends. I took a good look at her and saw that she was probably a good ten or fifteen years older than I was, with traces of crow’s feet that appeared when she laughed. I like all kinds of women but I have a special affection for older women and particularly for crow’s feet, the way they dignify beauty. That’s what my song “Crow’s Feet” is really about, whatever Greil Marcus might tell you.
She noticed me and waved me over and I weaved through the bodies to her table. She was trying to tell me something but the jukebox was on and David Allan Coe kept drowning her out. I leaned in closer until her mouth was brushing up against my ear.
“Were you the boy who won all those dancing contests?” she yelled.
I took a long cold drink.
When Juanita came back in the bar I was already well acquainted with my new friends. The blonde, Marybelle, was sitting on my lap and pouring shots down my throat. The other three were asking me all kinds of questions about my early fame and what I was doing now and what Reed was like and all that sort of thing. Then I saw Juanita come in through the front door, straightening her dress and glancing around the room. I flagged her over and all my new friends kind of looked at each other like, “Aw shit.” Marybelle slid an arm over my shoulders and watched Juanita approach. When she got right up next to me she gave me a good slap and said:
“Your friend Reed is loco! And who is this Deliah person?”
That was the second night that Reed went crazy, the first night he went loco.
3.
Juanita left the next day and told her daddy some outrageous story about me that broke up our partnership. I could have blamed Reed for that but I took it in stride. One less thing to worry about. Reed was awfully sorry though when he heard. He actually drove the Hammer into Fort Worth and came back with a new Gibson guitar that he gave me, with cowboys painted on the pickguard.
He also picked up something for himself, a mandolin made out of a tricycle tire and a cow bone, though he wouldn’t say where he go it. That night we broke out the Early Times and decided to sit around and pick for a while. We sat out on the front porch and Reed started in with a new song of his, a country retelling of Plato’s “Apology.” I don’t remember it too well but the chorus went “This is my apology/but I ain’t sorry.” When it finally finished I started in with a song I wrote called “Tunguska” about that big explosion in Siberia that some folks say was due to an asteroid. I have my own ideas about that but I won’t go into them now. The neat thing about the song is that it’s in G but holds on a D, the fifth chord, and kind of stays there for a while so you’re waiting for the resolve, whether you know it or not. The effect is like a wave that’s suspended in mid-air and when the G comes the wave crashes down and everyone gets wet.
We played a few more songs and then it came to be Reed’s turn again. He started playing this minor chord pattern and then started singing and pretty quick I realized it was “Deliah Where She Shouldn’t Be,” which of course is about you-know-who. He’d only played it for me once before and I didn’t remember it well but I listened and harmonized a little on the chorus. When he finished we both just sat there for a while and let the insects do the talking. I didn’t really know what to follow that song with. Reed took a big slug of Early Times, got up, and walked off the porch.
“Where you going, Reed?” I called after him.
No answer. I figured he needed some time alone so I just stayed where I was and played around on my new guitar. More time passed. I went inside and made some beans and took them out and ate them, with a slug of whiskey now and then. Still more time passed. I thought about picking up that James Baldwin book again but I was nearly drunk and I can’t read when I’m drunk. I got up and did a quick little two-step. I only do that when I’m drunk now, and never for big groups of people.
I decided I better go look for Reed. I walked out into the dirt and past the fire-pit and kicked through some of the dry brush. I was half-worried about snakes but I figured it they wanted to bite me bad enough they’d bite me no matter what. I headed down the incline towards the train-tracks. About three or four times a day the trains would go by, freight and Amtrak. It didn’t wake me up anymore. The Texas starlight illuminated those long black tracks and I saw Reed sitting on a big rock with his knees up to his chin. I walked up and stood next to him with my hands in my pockets.
“What you doing, Reed?” I asked.
“Waiting for a train.”
“There won’t be a train for another two or three hours.”
“I can wait,” he said.
“I reckon you can.” I saw he was rolling cigarettes on his knees. He gave me one and lit it for me, then lit his. The ends flickered orange.
“I waited for Deliah once,” he said.
This was the most he’d ever said about her, so I had to think about how to respond.
“Yeah?” I said finally.
“Yeah,” he said.
“What happened?” I whispered.
He took a long drag on his cigarette and let the smoke roll slowly out of his mouth and drift into the air.
“She never came,” he said.
After that I couldn’t get much out of him. I wasn’t sure if he was actually going to try to hop the train. They go by pretty fast there. But there was really nothing I could do so I walked back to the house and fell asleep on the porch. I woke up a little later to the sound of the train rolling by. I waited a half hour for Reed, but he didn’t show. I went inside and fell asleep and when I woke up early that morning I realized yeah, he was gone.
So that I guess was the third night that Reed went crazy if by going crazy you mean worrying himself silly over some girl from his past who he wouldn’t talk about, and hopping a freight train to God knows where just before our second record hit the stores. People keep asking me if I know where he is and I always tell them that I don’t and wouldn’t say if I did. But it’s better than them asking me about all those dancing contests.