Continued from page 2 Figure 3: Stage 3: Metronome NARRATOR: 'ALL ALCOHOLICS ARE BLUE DEATH RATS" But he was dead? Maybe she was dead? The depression was exhausting. She had no idea who's hands those were. Just a flutter...eyelids, lips, wind, birds, what? She was barely conscious. (fucking baseball) Fucking vodka. She heard it though. That bastard. Her first husband. And he was DEAD...FOR YEARS! He didn't even count. Figure 3: Stage 3: Metronome (detail) Listen to excerpt METRONOME. IT IS 1957. HE IS AT THE KITCHEN WINDOW. SHE HAD BEEN GONE THREE DAYS. HE NEVER KNEW WHAT TO DO. HE JUST WAITED. HE KNEW SHE WAS PROBABLY OUT DRINKING THE PIANO IN THE LIVING ROOM WAS NOT ENOUGH. HE UNDERSTOOD IT. SHE WAS A LOT YOUNGER THAN HIM...BUT HE STILL HAD THE FEELING. SO HE WAITED. SOONER OR LATER SHE ALWAYS GOT HOME. Figure 3: Stage 3: Metronome (detail) That time one Sunday in 1942 when they drove down to Palo Duro For a picnic. She was trying to cut down on her drinking and had just found out She was pregnant. Both of them were in kind of shock. They had an odd conversation while sitting on that pallet with The Jesus Face his first wife had made. "Sex is a lot better since I quit drinking." " How do you know?" "What?" "How do you know if you say you can't remember it?" "Well, I remember some of it." "Can you remember who with?" "Most of the time." "But not always." "No." "Did you feel bad about it the next day?" "Not always, but usually. Especially if they'd been rough." "Did you ever wake up beat up?" "Yes. A couple of times. It was scary. That's why I quit the first time. I'd wake up in some strange place all knocked around with my clothes torn up. I told myself you've got to stop this. You're going to get killed. I just couldn't keep doing it." "Where was the strangest place you woke up?" "Mexico City. In a trailer." "Were you there already?" "No. I was in Cleveland." He'd played there. When they were still the Spiders. He had a souvenir spoon from Cleveland. Figure 3A: Stage 3: Bloodtime Story MAN VOICE: He squat down and looked at it. His dog was hung up in the fence. The face was gone except for one eye and part of the head. The part with that spot like a musical note. The dog had got tangled up in the wire and cut off all the blood to three of its legs. They'd gone green and big as gourds by the time he found it. He loved the dog, but had shot it straight away. He didn't even pet it. Years later, It turned into a bedtime story. "Daddy tell me again bout that dog" So he'd sit down on the edge of the bed in the dark and tell what a fine dog it was...until his older brother had murdered it. And he tell this brother said he'd found the dog all hung up and sufferin so he shot it out of its misery...but tell he never believed a word of it because his brother was a damn born liar and had also hated the dog anyway. Then he'd say he never liked his sum-bitch brother ever since...and end the telling by saying the only one of his brothers he ever did care anything about at all, was the younger one who got his head knocked off in a car wreck in 1930. Figure 3D: Stage 3: Knocked Off "My brothers played ball" Then it was "Goodnight" and the door shut behind him. The only bedtime story he ever knew. But back then...he just squat down and looked at it. He was 12 years old and it was 1898 and Teddy Roosevelt had just whipped Cuba. Figure 3H: Stage 3: Spoon Later, He walked back to the house and his Pa was butchering a hog. His Ma spooning out the brains into a frying pan. "Fightin a bunch of Mexcans ain't no war...Hell it ain't even no fight...Missionary Ridge an Lookout Mountain...them was fights." His Pa was mutterin. It always made him jittery to kill stuff. Over supper, he told them about his dog. His brother laughed. Figure 3B: Stage 3: Swarming WOMAN VOICE: In 1922, She sits at the piano. She is 17 years old. The woman in black from church sits with her...very close on the bench to her right...pointing at notes. She leans away from the woman...far left, toward the low end. The woman has huge breasts and will only teach hymns. She's a sweet person, but a religious fanatic. God is always swarming out her mouth. She has hideous breath. Figure 3C: Stage 3: Middle C Later, in nightclubs during the 1930's, she'll giggle "Kid, this is why I always play way down in the bottom... Every time I go up past Middle C, I can still smell that Ol' Biddy's breath." And it was true. Down in the bottom, her left hand could raise the dead. But not all true...because on the high end her right hand could make em dance. It was solid pure greased lightning. Figure 3E: Stage 3: Love Seat In 1923, She catches the Poppa and the woman in black by surprise on the love seat in the parlor. She's tickled...but never tells. Figure 3F: Stage 3: Secretly Endowed In 1924, The woman in black helps her get a scholarship to a religious school far away. It is a music college in Dallas...secretly endowed by the Church of Christ..."An probably the Ku Klux Klan" she says later. Figure 3G: Stage 3: Unspeakable In 1925, She discovers Jazz. One month later, she is expelled for getting caught playing barrel house piano in a juke joint down in Deep Ellum. "Who caught me?" she said. A dean of Discipline tells her she is the first young lady ever expelled from their institution. "This Jazz is a terrible wickedness" he says "but a white girl playing it with Negroes is unspeakable!" When he hears about it, the Poppa will cut deep slashes across the tops of his hands with a razor. He cries all night. It was awful...and she is thrilled. Six weeks later, she is enrolled in a beauty school in Ft. worth, has a waitress job and is rehearsing her own band. She is 20 years old. Continued on page 4