Novel

Wednesday, March 9

Brew got a job as a Christmas Casual at the post office. Saved up enough money to go to Beaufort, South Carolina, to see Balder graduate from boot camp. Uncle Wayne loaned them Granny Brown's Crown Victoria for the trip.

Brew had a secured band credit card with a $300 line of credit. He only used it for things like motel reservations, and paid it down every month.

Balder was his platoon highshooter. He shot Expert on the M-16.

Boot camp wore him down, but he passed.

That's more than Riddick Bowe can say. Riddick Bowe quit.

Next was advanced infantry training, at Camp LeJeune, but he had two weeks of leave to rest up for it.

Owen was playing at Jekyll Island with Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver. They planned to stop by there, pick Owen up, and drive Owen to rejoin the band in Bainbridge, Georgia, the next weekend. He'd have a week to hang out with Balder in the trailer in Point and Shoot.

Balder wore his uniform, to show Owen. Maybe Brenda would give Owen a haircut, while he was home.

When they went into the hall, Owen was talking to a fan, at the CD table. He looked up, glanced at Balder, looked away. Then did a classic double-take, when he realized the trim, hard Marine walking towards him was his kid brother. Little Balder.

I guess he wouldn't beat the shit out of Balder anymore, now that Balder could kill him with his fingernails.

Balder changed clothes on the band bus.

They had brought Owen a cooler full of oysters, and he shucked a few in the parking lot.

You could always win your way into Owen's heart by bringing him a cooler full of oysters.

And he was never without his Dexter/Russell oyster knife.

Owen and Balder hung out. Fished, cooked, saw high school friends.

Sometimes, at Christmas, they would go around caroling people, for tips. Like buskers.

One Christmas they provided the music for the Gulf CI Christmas Party at the Wewa Community Center, correctional officers dancing with each other, and with other correctional officers' wives and husbands. Neither Brew nor Brenda danced.

On the way to Bainbridge, they stopped at Malone, and Brew took pictures of the town's five water towers with his point-and-shoot camera.

No, he didn't have the camera yet. Brenda bought that for him in Tucker. He went by and looked at the town's five water towers.

He later wrote a film script called The Water Towers of Malone, Florida 32455. By analogy with The Bridges of Madison County.

Brew knew the zip codes of all the towns in Northwest Florida that had prisons in them, from working in the hole, at the post office, throwing packages, addressed to inmates.

A cake with a file in it, as he said.

Max Tillman came to the church the band was playing at and sat with Owen on the band bus. He's a sweet man, and guided Owen along. A good fiddle player, too.

They talked about picker friends, Owen's relatives. I remember once Max had Owen sit in with his band at a Dempsey Barron fish fry, in Callaway.

When Owen and Balder saw Dempsey Barron at Possum Day, in Wausau, shaking voters' hand, they laughed, because he looked like a possum.

And this was before he got Alzheimer's.

The band played at a church.

Admission was free, but a love offering was taken up.

Also, Doyle sold CDs between sets.

The band stopped there once a year. Whenever they had new product to sell.

Those southern Protestant churches love a gospel show, and buy CDs, and take them home, and listen to them.

Brew subscribed to CE Weekly. Contract employment. The job-shopper's bible.

He got an eight-month temporary job in Atlanta, as a technical writer. The job paid $25 an hour. With a chance of permanent employment, later on.

Suent Scientific, the fiber-optic cable manufacturer. The fiber-optic cable business was booming.

He had an income tax refund in a savings account and some money in his bank credit card. Enough to pay a security deposit and the first month's rent on an apartment in Lilburn, get a phone and a mail box, and eat until his first paycheck.

He had liked living in the trailer, writing, publishing pamphlets. They could live on Brenda's pay at the prison, with no debt, but they couldn't afford to buy a place of their own, closer to the prison, without Brew working.

Brew gladly took the job.

He wrote better when he had money to pay the bills and no time to write than he did when he had time to write and no money to pay the bills. His outlook was brighter. His tone lighter. Being broke was a bummer.

Also, being a writer at your wife's expense was a bummer. Brenda was going out there into the rat-race. Why couldn't Brew? Was his leg broke?

Yo' leg broke?

Once Brew moved into his bachelor pad, where he wrote about wild screaming nudity, sex, and excretion every night, after work, overcompensating for his lonely monastic life of shit-work and writing--you don't get to be Point and Shoot Florida's most prolific writer by daydreaming about it--he found that he could write as much, working, as he did writing and puttering around, he just didn't have any time to putter around.

Well, he had a little time to putter around.

One night Owen came by on a surprise visit. He was helping as a sideman on a record a friend was cutting, at a recording studio, in Atlanta.

Brew's apartment had a patio, and a Weber grill, and he and Owen went shopping, at a Kroger store, and Owen cooked rock Cornish game hens, on the grill, outside, and half of a Boston butt, and mustard greens, inside, on the gas range.

Nothing perks up a mess of mustard greens like half a Boston butt.

Brew took the foam rubber pad out of the back of his pickup truck with the camper cap on the back and made Owen a palette on the floor.

"Make me a palette, I'll sleep on your floor."

A boy and his dad.

"Buy me a bottle of beer, I'll pay you back."