Johnny Cash: The Life by Robert Hilburn Read Free Book Online Page B

about to fall. When the house lights flickered, indicating closing time, John felt himself panic. He didn’t want to let this girl go. “Can I take you home?” he blurted out, and his spirits soared when she answered, “Sure.”
    Because he didn’t have a car, John had to accompany Vivian home on the bus. On the way, he learned that her family had deep roots in San Antonio. There was a popular market named Liberto’s, and one of her uncles had started the first Spanish-speaking radio station in town. Her father, Tom, owned an insurance agency and her mother was a homemaker. She had a younger sister and an older brother. When they arrived at her front door, he asked if he could see her again. After she said she’d like that, he leaned over and tried to kiss her. Stepping back, she said, “I don’t kiss boys on the first date.”
    It may not have been the reaction John hoped for at the time, but it was, in fact, the perfect answer.
      
    Cash was attracted by Vivian’s beauty, but he also quickly decided that Vivian was a “good” girl and that she’d make a faithful, loving wife and a caring mother. And, he would soon learn, she was even a fan of country music. If he had known that, he joked years later, he would have sung her an Eddy Arnold song. Within a week, he was thinking he would someday marry her.
    In her room that night, Vivian retraced every moment of the evening. She told herself she had found her Prince Charming. She spent much of the night tossing and turning, wondering if he’d really call. Her answer came early the next morning. John called not just that day but every other day until he left Brooks in early August. The pair also went out every time he could get away. They went to movies. They went to the malt shop. They went window-shopping. They held hands and strolled along the city’s picturesque River Walk in the moonlight. It wasn’t long before Johnny got that first kiss while they sat on the roof of a car at a drive-in. Soon after, he carved J.C. Loves V.L. on one of the wooden benches along the River Walk. They daydreamed about the future. They were collecting a remarkable number of memories for just three weeks together.
    Even though Vivian’s father was concerned about his “baby” dating an Air Force man, Vivian’s younger sister, Sylvia, remembers that her parents couldn’t help but like this polite, respectful young man who said “Yes, ma’am” and “No, sir” without fail. Still, Sylvia recalls, her father was relieved when he learned Johnny was finally leaving for his new assignment in Germany. There was no way, he figured, that the relationship would last.
    But Johnny convinced himself that it would. He told Vivian—or “Viv,” as he began calling her—that he loved her, would always love her, and wanted to spend his life with her. He told her he would write a letter every day—and he made her promise to do the same. It was heady stuff for a nineteen-year-old boy, but it was even more of a fairy tale for a seventeen-year-old girl. He seemed so mature in his uniform. She also thought he was smart, caring, a man of faith, and, of course, very, very sexy.
    Johnny wanted to make love to her, but she refused. In reality, he probably didn’t try that hard, because he didn’t want to jeopardize his new dream by giving her the wrong impression of his intentions. One day, he told himself over and over, Vivian Liberto would be Mrs. Johnny Cash and he’d be a singer on the radio. This vision gave him immense comfort as he returned to Dyess in the final days of August. He had promised Viv he would call her before the ship left Brooklyn for West Germany, but he couldn’t wait.
    On the morning of September 4 he called from Dyess, and she was thrilled to hear his voice. In a letter he wrote her later that same day, he asked her to send him a large photo so he could put it over his bed in Germany and look at it every morning and night. He enclosed a photo he’d had taken at