The Woman in Oil Fields by Tracy Daugherty Read Free Book Online Page B

and a life of rock and roll – until the chilly night, one winter, I fell in love playing “Me and Bobby McGee” behind a sad young lady named Ida Mae Weaver.
    It happened this way. I had a friend named Jackie Waldrip. He played French horn in the Pride of the Mustangs but his hero was Jimi Hendrix, and he’d bought an old Gibson guitar at a yard sale. When marching season was over, we practiced Beatles tunes in my garage after school. Jackie knew a couple of other guitarists, whose names I’ve forgotten now, and we formed a “pop quartet” – that’s what the fan-zines called the boy-groups who were topping the charts of the day. Psychedelia was at its peak then – this was ’67-We called ourselves “Crystal Creation.” I drew an exploding diamond on a piece of poster board and taped it to the front of my bass drum.
    Jackie was a quiet kid with a sorrowful demeanor, even when he smiled. His brown hair looked like pigeon feathers, plucked and scattered. Musically, he was much more gifted than the rest of the “Crystals,” but he always deferred to the bass player on arrangements. I thought the bass player was a moron. He knew zip about song structure and didn’t even own any Beatles albums. Jackie adjusted to my pace even when I rushed a phrase. He looked up to me, though with his skills and gravity of presence, he should’ve been the leader.
    My mother brought us iced tea and Mars bars whenever we took a break. “You sound real good, boys,” she’d say, trying to hide her smile.
    We always rehearsed in my garage because it was large and new. My father was an oil man – which is what I’ve since become, running pipe up to Alaska out of Portland, Oregon – and we had a nicer home than most of my friends. Jackie never talked about his parents. I hadn’t been to his house. I got the idea that his folks embarrassed him somehow, or maybe they were sick or something.
    Often he’d stay for dinner after the other “Crystals” had left. Baked squash was his favorite food. That’s one of my strongest memories about Jackie Waldrip – I don’t know why. “He could eat a pound of this stuff,” my mother told me. “Don’t they feed him at home?”
    After dinner we’d play records in my room and talk about the girls in our classes. “Peggy Sue Rittenour is named after the Buddy Holly song,” I told him one night. This fact made her exotic to me. She was the first girl I ever tried to date – though my efforts embarrassed us both. At the spring prom the year
    before, I’d been too shy to ask her to dance. All night I smiled at her from across the dance floor/gym, but I wouldn’t come close. She stood with her circle of friends. One by one they approached me and said, “You’re breaking her heart,” “I hope you’re happy – you’ve made her miserable,” or, “Cretin.”
    I felt as foolish as when I’d dropped my stick.
    Just as I’d worked up my nerve to speak to her, the band announced its final tune. Peggy Sue started to leave. In a panic – I had to make a gesture – I rushed up to her, pulled a quarter from my pocket (all I had) and said grandly, “Here, take this!” It wasn’t until months afterwards that I realized she might’ve been offended.
    â€œKissing’s enough,” Jackie said. “That’s all I ever want to do. It gets ugly after that.”
    I wondered how he knew; I’d never seen him talk to a girl. “What do you mean?”
    â€œYou know. What you want to do, and what she wants to do, and would you like to go to a movie tonight, and which one, or would you rather study? It’s complicated.”
    â€œYeah,” I said, fearing I’d never get close enough to even smell a girl’s perfume. Dance floor etiquette was already more than I could handle.
    ______
    Music