Jonathan Kellerman - Capital Crimes

“Payment.”

“For what?”

“Babysitting, back rent, whatever.” Winking at his wife.

She hesitated, avoided her family’s eyes. Then quaking so hard she thought she’d fall apart, she scooped up Baker and followed her husband out to the van.

As the Ford drove off, Dixie ’s mother said, “Figures. They never took their gear out the back.”

Baker Southerby grew up on the roadhouse circuit, learning to read and write and do arithmetic from his mother. He picked things up quickly, making her job easy. She hugged and kissed him a lot and he seemed to like that. No one ever talked about the time that she and Danny had gone and left him.

She told him to call her Dixie because everyone did and, “Sweetie, you and me both know I’m your mama.”

Years later, Baker figured it out. She’d been all of seventeen, wanted to see herself as that pretty girl with the lightning fingers up on stage, not some housewife.

When he was five, he asked to play her Gibson F-5 mandolin.

“Honey, that’s a real precious thing.”

“I’ll be careful.”

Dixie hesitated. Baker stared at her, with those serious eyes.

She ran her hand over his blond crew cut. He kept staring.

“All right, then, but I’m sitting right next to you. Want me to show you some chords?”

Grave nod.

An hour after he started, he was playing C, G and F. By the end of the day, he was coaxing forth a respectable version of “Blackberry Blossom.” Not at full speed, but his tone was clear, his right hand nice and smooth.

“Dan, come listen to this.” Listening to him, watching how careful he was, Dixie was comfortable letting him play the mandolin without her hovering.

Danny came in from the porch of the motel, where he’d been smoking and strumming and writing songs.

“What?”

“Just listen- go ahead, sweetie-pie little man.”

Baker played.

“Huh…,” Danny said. Then: “I got an idea.”

They bought him his own mandolin. Nothing high-priced, a forties A-50 they picked up in a Savannah pawnshop, but it had decent tone. By age six, Baker had a trunk full of stage-duds and a thirties F-4 almost as shiny as Dixie ’s F-5 and he was a full-time headliner. The new act was officially The Southerby Family Band: Danny, Dixie and Little Baker the Amazing Smoky Mountain Kid.

Mostly there wasn’t room for all that on any marquee so it was just The Southerbys.

Baker’s chord repertoire ran all the way down the fretboard, encompassed the majors, minors, sevenths, sixths, ninths, elevenths, and thirteenths, along with diminished, augmented, and a whole bunch of interesting extensions he came upon himself that could be called jazz, even though the closest they got to jazz was a few Texas swing songs that always ended up sounding bluegrassy.

By the time he was nine, he played cleaner and faster than his mother and to her credit, she reacted with nothing but pride.

Homeschooling- though that concept hadn’t been invented- continued and Baker was smart enough to get a year ahead of his age group. At least according to the intelligence test Dixie had clipped out of Parents magazine.

Baker grew up on fast food, tobacco smoke and applause. Nothing seemed to alter his quiet personality. When he was twelve, a smooth-talking man who’d heard them play at a honky-tonk outside of Natchez told Danny he’d give all three of them a recording contract, make them the new Carter Family.

They went into the studio, laid down five old standards, never heard back from the guy, tried calling a few times, then gave up and went back on the road.

When Baker was twelve, he announced that he wanted to go to a real school.

Danny said, “Just like that? You give it all up?”

Baker didn’t answer.

“Wish you’d talk more, son. Kind of hard to know what’s going on behind those eyes.”

“I just told you.”

“Giving it all up.”

Silence.

Dixie said, “That’s what he wants, maybe it’s not such a bad idea.”

Danny looked over her. “Yeah, I been feeling that’s coming.”

“What has?”

“Itching to settle down.”

“Could’ve done it years ago,” said Dixie. “I was waiting.”

“For what?”

She shrugged. “Something.”

They moved to Nashville, because it was in Tennessee and, theoretically, not a big deal to visit their families. The real reason was: Music City.

Danny was still a young man, though sometimes he felt like he’d lived three lifetimes. The mirror told him he looked sharp, and his pipes were good; guys a lot less talented than he were making it big-time, why not give it a shot?

He used some of the cash he’d saved from years on the road and bought a little frame house in The Nations. Nice white neighborhood, full of hardworking people. Dixie wanted to play house that was fine; he’d be over on Sixteenth Street.

Baker went to junior high and met other kids. He stayed quiet but managed to make a few friends and, except for math where he needed some catch-up, classes were pretty easy.

Dixie stayed home and played her mandolin and sang “Just for the sake of it, Baker, which is music at the purest, right?”

Sometimes she asked Baker to jam with her. Mostly, he did.

Danny was out most of the time, trying to scare up a career on Music Row. He got a few gigs playing rhythm guitar at the Ryman when regulars were sick, did some club dates, paid his own money to cut demos that never went anywhere.

When the money ran low, he took a job teaching choir at a Baptist church.

After a year and a half of that, over dinner he announced it was time to hit the road again.

Baker said, “Not me.”

Danny said, “I didn’t mean you.” Glancing at his wife. She screwed up her mouth. “I put on weight, nothing’s gonna fit.”

“That’s why God invented tailors,” said her husband. “Or do it yourself, you used to know how to sew.”

“I still do,” she said, defensively.

“There you go. We’re leaving on Monday.”

Today was Thursday.

Dixie said, “Leaving for where?”

“ Atlanta. I got us a gig opening for the Culpeppers at a new bluegrass club. Nothing fancy, all they want is S.O.S.”

Family talk for the Same Old Shit.

Meaning the standards. Danny, seeing himself as a modern man, had come to despise them.

“Just like that,” said Dixie. “You made all the plans.”

“Don’t I always? You might want to get some new strings for your plink-box. I overheard you yesterday. The G and D are dead.”

“What about Baker?”

“He can take care of himself, right, son?”

“He’s not even fourteen.”

“How old were you when you had him?”

Talking about him as if he wasn’t there.

Baker wiped his mouth, carried his plate to the sink, and began washing it.

“So?” said Danny.

Dixie sighed. “I’ll try to sew it myself.”

From then on, they were gone more than they were home. Doing a month on the road, returning for a week or ten days, during which Dixie doted on Baker with obvious guilt and Danny sat by himself and smoked and wrote songs no one else would ever hear.

The summer of Baker’s fifteenth birthday, Danny announced they were sending him to Bible camp in Memphis for six weeks. “Time to get some faith and spirituality, son.”

By sheer coincidence, Danny and Dixie had been booked for a six-week gig exactly during that period. Aboard a cruise boat leaving from Biloxi.

“Hard to get phone contact from there,” said Dixie. “This way we know you’ll be safe.”

During the last week of camp, Baker ate something off and came down with horrible food poisoning. Three days later, the bug was gone but he’d lost seven pounds and was listless. The camp doctor had left early on a family emergency and the Reverend Hartshorne, the camp director, didn’t want to risk any legal liability; just last summer some rich girl’s family had sued because she’d gotten a bladder infection that developed into sepsis. Luckily that kid had survived, probably her fault in the first place, she had a reputation for fooling with the boys but tell that to those fancy-pants lawyers…