Texas Bluesman Explains Why He Won't Gun Down Everyone Who Pisses Him Off

I walk straight through the house without looking at anything, past the dining room all set up for supper, and the living room with all the golden chairs and couches and lamps and all the historical paintings of Brinkley and his dick. I can hear the Mexican servants hurrying to catch up. One of them runs past me to get the door open before I get to it. As he pulls it open for me, a glass door opens in one of the ante-rooms next to the circular staircase. Two heads cautiously peek out. It’s Rose Dawn and The Great Koraan. The moment he recognizes me, his face reddens. Then I hear Rose Dawn cry out, “Herbert?” But I don’t stop.

Outside, the night air is cool and sweet. The dark sky is bright with a sliver of moon and thousands of stars. My mind goes back to all those ancient-pretending paintings of Brinkley and it almost feels like what I just walked out of was Babylon itself. For a moment, I think about Hamer and find myself wondering if it was a mistake to have left him with those people. But that thought only lasts a moment and then I’m just glad to be away from them.

She called me Herbert in front of her husband and the Mexican servants. No telling who else knows it now. Great. This thing is starting to happen even faster than I’d expected. As I walk along the road toward town, I notice someone walking towards me from the opposite way. Even before I can make him out, I guess who it is. It’s that other guy. He sure does have a way of showing up.

I try to walk past him, but he keeps trying to block my path. For some reason he’s boiling angry. “You fucking asshole,” he shouts in a high-pitched voice. “What’d you have to do that for? I hand it to you on a fucking silver platter. Couldn’t you just let it happen? We’d have won. You’d have walked free. But you couldn’t do it. Why? Didn’t you see his pain? Don’t you see how the man was suffering? Why couldn’t you just let him do himself? Why do you have to play God.”

Fuck you,” I say. “I don’t believe in God.” That gets me so ticked off, for a second I actually consider taking out Old Lucky and going back and shooting him. But I don’t. If I shot everybody that pissed me off, there wouldn’t be a whole lot of people left. I don’t really hear what he says after that, except that I shouldn’t expect the next round to be any walk in the park.

By the time I finally get home to the rooming house, Jack is asleep on the rocking chair out front. As gently as I can, I pick him and carry him inside and put him down on his bed. Then I sneak into the kitchen to see if Mrs. Gruner might have put anything aside I could eat.

(Excerpt from Friend of the Devil, available on Kindle)

More Heard It on the "X"

At three minutes to, the light in the announcer’s booth comes on and I can see that Billy Bays, one of the station’s afternoon announcers, has come in. He greets us and then he and Raoul do a quick check and he smiles and gives me a thumbs-up. They’ve got about a dozen different announcers doing shifts at the station. They’re all bright, sunny guys, and everything they say always has an exclamation point attached.

“Thirty seconds,” says Raoul.

I nod and begin quickly playing the melody to the opening instrumental, which is a rolling medley of Sunshine Trails and Happy in the Saddle. When we go on the air, he’ll have me playing in the background and then, once Billy Bays finishes doing his thing, he’ll switch that mike off and bring me up to full.

“Ten seconds.”

Billy Bays and I both nod. Then Raoul holds up his hand for five, four, three... Then the on-the-air light comes on and he points to Billy Bays, who immediately starts speaking: “The Royal Consolidated Chemical Corporation of Chicago, Illinois, is proud to present The Peruna Program! Featuring America’s favorite singing cowboy, Slim Gatlinburg! Take it away, Slim!”

My strumming gets fiercer, as Billy Bays' booth light goes out. I let it go on another thirty seconds or so, then I start talking while I continue to pick and strum.

“Howdy there, friends and neighbors, this is Slim Gatlinburg, your saddle pal, host and good neighbor along the way. Golly, I’m glad you’ve come by my campfire to visit, because we got a really swell program ready for you today, some songs I know you’ll really like. Now here’s an old favorite of mine, My Oklahoma Home.”

When it’s springtime on the prairie, 

And the sagebrush is beginning to flower 

That’s when I’m riding back to my Oklahoma home 

Where the trees sing in the breeze 

And the Sooner Sun starting to tower 

‘Cause that’s where this cowboy’s sweetheart is waiting 

And soon we’ll be celebrating 

On my Indian pony I’m riding 

Over the prairie we’ll be gliding 

Back to my Oklahoma home.

Now I do the chorus. Needless to say, this is something I wouldn’t be caught dead playing in a saloon. But I’ll sing it on street corners when the audience tends toward families and maiden aunts and kids who go to sleep each night needing to believe cowboys all drink soda pop and carry banjos while they’re riding the range. It’s for people who don’t ever think about dustbowls and hungry, thirsty cattle and skies that are always gray. Now the second verse.

When it’s springtime on the prairie
And we’re riding along the trail
Watching the gray white dove above me
And hearing the peeping quail
That’s when my heart is laughing,
And I know it won’t be long
‘till she’s riding her pony beside me,
back in my Oklahoma home.

By now, it’s like a big chunk of my brain has stepped outside for a smoke. The problem with singing in a broadcast studio is there isn’t anyone in the audience to fix on. I try singing to Raoul, but, being an engineer, he’s not hearing any music, only sound levels and interference. Suddenly I start wondering again what the hell I said or did that got him all pissed off so much. All I did was ask about that guy. Is the reason I never heard about him that everyone is so scared of him they don’t even mention his name?

I do another song, one about rolling wagon wheels, followed by one about campfires and shooting stars. And the whole time I’m singing it, I’m thinking about the way Christine looked down her nose at me this morning when I was visiting the office. The nerve she has ordering me to provide song lists without bothering to say who’s asking for it. Those people all act like they’re doing me a big favor having me sing for them and that the five-dollar bill they give me after each show is a lot more than I’m worth, but I know it’s their way of keeping me on a short leash. If I wasn’t pulling mail, I’d be long gone. And if I wasn’t pulling a whole lot of mail, they wouldn’t have added the Good Neighbor Get Together to my workload.

I start to strum another song, but then I see Raoul waving for me to start my first commercial break. I take my left hand off the neck and take the first script from the stand.

“You know, folks, when you’re out riding the range, day after day, I can tell you, there’s nothing worse than having a sluggish system. Do you ever feel like that? Now, you’re probably just like me, most of the time strong and regular, but sometimes we all need a little help. That’s why I want you to try Peruna, with the absolute, positive understanding that it’ll restore you to a regular state or your money will be cheerfully refunded.

“Every day we get hundreds of letters from folks just like yourself who’ve been troubled by sluggishness and, after using Peruna, they’re right back to their old active selves. Peruna, the modern miracle medicine made by your friends at the Royal Consolidated Chemical Corporation of Chicago, Illinois. Just send two dollars to Peruna, care of this station, Del Rio, Texas. And please tell them Slim Gatlinburg sent you!”

And I look again at the clock, twenty minutes have gone by, which means I’ve still got an hour and forty minutes left.

“Now here’s one of my favorite songs. It’s called Under the Blue Wyoming Moon and it goes like this.”

Yippee-kai-yai-yay,
oer the hills the doggies play 
And I’m happy in the saddle again!

 (Excerpt from Friend of the Devil, available on Kindle here).

The Final Battle with Frank Hamer

Finishing up translation for the Czech-language edition of "Friend of the Devil", which will be launching soon as na ebook. Lots of shooting, crazy driving and romance here in the last chapter. Here's a little sample - enjoy!

"Rose keeps driving for a minute, then stops and turns the car around. She looks over and sees all the blood coming out of my shoulder and starts to cry. Then she stops. “How many shots we got left?” she asks.

“In the chamber? One.”

She nods at my report.

“Plus the one you got.” I add. “What do you want to do?”

She thinks about it for a second. “You take your best shot, Slim. I’ll take mine.”

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We stay where we are, looking silently up the road until Hamer’s car appears. Rose mashes in first, hits the gas and we’re off. Second, third, fourth, and Dr Brinkley’s Packard is now a speeding Sikorsky fighter, a fiery meteor shooting across the sky, hogging the middle lane, the same as Hamer.

This time it’s a real bitch getting up to my shooting spot. I manage to seat on the edge of the window, while using my left hand to grab hold of a piece of the dashboard. Hamer’s a hundred yards away now, Rose floors it and now we’re charging hard. Hamer still doesn’t get out of the way and neither does Rose. I aim at the spot on the windshield where I know he is. An instant later we’re up on each other and I fire. A second later, we smash into each other and I go flying."

Devil at the Crossroads? Boring!

As a bluesman wandering America in the 1930s, Herbert T. Barrow was one of the few white men to hear the story of meeting the Devil at the crossroads. But it wasn’t something he paid much mind to. The way he saw it, half the black cats he knew told that yarn about themselves and a lot weren’t all that hot guitar players. But the real reason was that Herbert Barrow was an atheist. He didn’t hold with God, the Devil, preachers, or spook-talking hoodoo men of any stripe.

But then one day, against his better judgment, Herbert gives a ride to a country preacher who it turns out happens to be on his way to those same crossroads. But he’s not there to sell his soul, he’s there to collect one. The problem is, he’s already ten hours late for his midnight meeting and needs Herbert to drive him fast as he can to get him there on time. Again, against his better judgment, Herbert obliges.

What he witnesses there at the crossroads and over the next few days would probably have convinced anyone else that God and the Devil were not only real, but also running extremely convoluted wagers with each other over how quickly virtuous men succumb to temptation. Anyone else might have been shocked to learn that, while the Devil was unmistakably evil, his opposite number was mostly uninvolved and distant. But of course, all this is missing on Herbert T. Barrow, whose refusal to believe is unwavering.

All Herbert wants is to get through Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas and not stop until he reaches Del Rio, on the Mexican border. While the rest of America is caught in the grips of the Great Depression, Del Rio is an oasis of prosperity and hope. That is because Del Rio is home of the Brinkley Hospital, a world famous sexual rejuvenation clinic. Dr. JR Brinkley, its celebrated founder, has developed a revolutionary method of transplanting the testicles of goats onto those of well-heeled human patients, giving them new lease on virility. Or so he says. 

To get his message out, Brinkley has built the world’s most powerful radio station across the river in Mexico. Most of the time, its million watts are delivering his folksy lectures about sexual health. The rest of the time it’s being rented out to hucksters, preachers, clairvoyants and yodelers, all with their own messages of hope and transformation and all of them there for just one reason; money.  

Despite his background as a reefer-smoking, tea-shade-wearing, jazz-playing viper, Herbert’s plan is to enter their ranks as a singing cowboy. But besides God and the Devil, a couple other things stand in his way. First is his adoring younger cousin Clyde and second, Clyde's alley-cat girlfriend Bonnie. They’re young, hop-headed, crazy in love, meaner than snakes, and can’t be convinced that Herbert wouldn’t be the perfect third wheel to their criminal outfit. Then there’s Hamer, Captain Frank Hamer of the Texas Rangers, a natural-born killer and possibly the only honest lawman in Texas. He’s pledged to hunt down the Barrows and isn’t stopping till he has every last one of them dead. Unfortunately that includes Herbert.

In a series of battles that stretches across the South, the Midwest and onto the streets of Del Rio, Herbert finds himself up against God, the Devil, Frank Hamer and assorted bloodthirsty minions. Time and again, he manages to survive, only to see things get worse and worse. But just as his situation is looking hopeless, he finds a powerful, unexpected ally; a pregnant, underage, bible-reading radio clairvoyant named Rose Dawn.

Friendof the Devil is available as an ebook on Kindle.