Satan Is Real by Charlie Louvin

Author:Charlie Louvin
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins US

CHAPTER 27

THE

BLUFF

* * *

Moving to Birmingham turned out to be the worst mistake we ever made, just like I’d told Ira it would be. First, the radio job fell through, and then we just couldn’t find anywhere to play. This other duet had been working the area for years, and they sung every song we ever wrote. They sounded just like us, and, boy, were they quick. If we had a song come out at ten o’clock in the morning, they’d be singing it on their twelve o’clock show on WVOK. That’s how quick they’d learn it. Half the folks out yonder in Birmingham actually thought we were impersonating them when we played a show.

We still weren’t making no headway at the Opry, either, and we were getting desperate. Not only had it been our dream since we were kids, we knew if we could get to Nashville we could play the United States from a central point. We were both sick to death of what we’d been doing. Working a radio station for a few months, playing all the decent places we could find around there, and then, when we’d played ’em all, moving on to find another radio station.

We kept auditioning for Jim Denny in the tool shed, and he kept giving us that old “don’t call us, we’ll call you” shit. And, of course, the call never came. We had no idea what we were doing wrong. We were pretty sure we were as good as anything on the Opry, but we just couldn’t get past Denny to save our lives.

Things were really getting rough. When I got back from Korea, I found that Betty, bless her heart, hadn’t used up none of the money from my royalties, nor from my Army paycheck, and it all added up to about ten thousand dollars. But even with the car paid for, we’d used almost all of it by the time Birmingham played out. We were all living together in a two-room duplex, slowly starving to death.

Finally, I couldn’t take anymore. I told Ira, “We gotta shit or get off the pot.”

“What pot?” he said. We were sitting in the kitchen, drinking coffee. “There ain’t no pot. There’s nothing we can try that we haven’t tried already.”

“Then I vote that we quit,” I said. “I’m sure I can get my job back at the Post Office, whether or not Morlin likes it. When I turn sixty-five, I can sit on the creek bank and drown worms. We’ll never get any kind of retirement out of this, we can’t get nothing going.”

“For once, I agree with you,” he said.

“All right,” I said. “Well, before we agree, let’s make a deal. I wanna try one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I wanna call Ken Nelson and see if he can get us on the Opry. We’re crazy, man. We can’t do everything ourselves. I’ll make one more call, and if it don’t work out, we’ll go our separate ways.”

“Ken Nelson ain’t gonna do shit,” said Ira.

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