Dean Hardeman felt better than he had in years. He felt vital and healthy and full of energy. Best of all, he felt that he was producing work that was worth something. The book was moving, and he was pleased with what he had written so far.
The day after the funeral Hardeman had moved out of the Beverly Sunset, which was much too expensive. For the past two weeks he had been in a small apartment-hotel recommended by Conn Driscoll. It was on a quiet section of Franklin Avenue, a block above Hollywood Boulevard. There Hardeman could work undisturbed, and he was within walking distance of stores for anything he needed. The apartment had a pool, which he did not use, and maid service, which he did.
Since moving, Hardeman had been so busy with the book that he had not called Joyce, even after Driscoll had said she was willing to see him. Hardeman was saving that meeting as a reward for himself when he got the book well underway. Another reason for the delay was Hardeman’s nervousness at seeing his ex-wife again. His past attempts at bringing about a reconciliation had gone badly, and he worried about blowing it again. He felt it would help his case if he could demonstrate to Joyce that he was both sober and working.
He read over slowly what he had written the day before, making pencil notations in the margin where he wanted to rewrite. What he had here, Hardeman decided, was the story of Billy Lockett, all right, but it was something more. It was a look at Billy’s generation.
Not that he wanted this to be categorized as a Generation book. Those usually took one of two approaches: the our-children-are-going-to-hell alarmist view, or the more popular God-bless-our-children-for-they-are-wiser-than-the-rest-of-us paean to adolescence. Hardeman found the young people of the Seventies no better and no worse than any of the other decades he had observed, going back to his own youth during World War II. The main difference he found was that the kids of the last fifteen years had received an inordinate amount of publicity.
Young people were constantly rediscovering such truths as Peace is Better Than War, and Sex is Fun, and Our Parents Don’t Know Everything. It would do no harm, probably, to let the kids go on thinking they invented these homilies, but maybe they should be reminded that they’re a little shy of the Wisdom of the Ages.
Hardeman riffled through the pages of manuscript he had completed so far. It was going to run somewhat longer than Driscoll had asked for, but after final cutting it would be close. What he needed to round out the book was a section on Billy’s childhood. The handouts Driscoll had given him were the usual publicity garbage — high school honor student passes up scholarship to bring his music to the people; a combination of talent and hard work propels him to success and happiness.
It was too bad, Hardeman thought, that he had not had a chance to talk to Billy’s parents while they were in town. They had left immediately after the funeral, apparently saying goodbye to nobody.
As long as he had reached a natural break in the flow of words, Hardeman decided it was a good time to call Joyce. He could have used a drink before talking to her, but he had limited the alcohol he kept in the apartment to a six-pack of Coors in the refrigerator. He lit a fresh cigarette and dialed Joyce’s number. He did not have to look it up.
“Hello?” The familiar, slightly husky voice made him tighten up in the chest.
“Hello, Joyce. How are you?”
“Dean, I heard you were in town.”
Very noncommittal, no “glad to hear from you.” Well, what did he expect? Get on with it.
“I’d like to see you, Joyce.”
Brief pause. “Do you think it’s wise?”
“Who knows from wise?” Was that too glib? “I’d like to see you, that’s all.”
“Dean, I don’t want to give you any false impressions. I’ll see you, if you want, but I’m not committing myself to anything.”
“I understand. No committments, no promises. Just an ex-husband getting together with his ex-wife. Don’t worry, I’ll behave.”
“All right.” Still doubtful.
“How about dinner tonight?”
“I can’t tonight.”
“Tomorrow?”
“I’m busy then too. Could we make it Friday?”
“You’re a popular lady.” Did that sound sarcastic? Better soften it. He was in no position to even hint at jealousy. “Friday is fine. I’ll pick you up at eight. You choose the place.”
“Let’s make it Henri’s on Rodeo Drive. I’ll meet you there.”
Okay, so she didn’t want him to come up to her place. Understandable, in view of past experience. “That’s fine,” he said. “Henri’s on Rodeo Drive. Eight o’clock, Friday.”
“I’ll see you then. Goodbye, Dean.”
Not a thoroughly satisfying first contact, but at least it was a contact. Hardeman wished he had a better feel for Joyce’s present frame of mind. It would give him a clue as to what approach was most likely to work. He had tried to get a hint from Conn Driscoll about which way the wind blew, but the young PR man was unaccountably vague about Joyce’s attitude. Still, he was grateful to Driscoll for breaking the ice.
But back to work. He had three days before the dinner date with Joyce, and it was best that he keep occupied. Where had he left off? Billy’s childhood. That’s what the book needed. What better way to get a feeling for Billy’s childhood than to go and take a look at the place where he spent it. Belford, Indiana.
The World Almanac told him that Belford, Indiana, had a population of 13,087. The Road Atlas told him it was located on U.S. Highway 50 on the East Fork of the White River, midway between Indianapolis and Louisville.
The information was of little use to Dean Hardeman. He knew they ran the Memorial Day 500 at Indianapolis and the Kentucky Derby at Louisville, but he still knew less about Belford than he did about Dakar.
He looked up the number of a travel agent and called to make arrangements to go to Belford. He could take a United flight to Chicago in the morning, he was told, then a local airline to Indianapolis, and finally to Belford by air taxi.
He decided against calling Billy’s parents to tell them he was coming. It was poor etiquette to drop in on strangers unannounced, but it was good research technique if you were looking for honest reactions.
Packing would be no problem — just enough in a small bag for an overnight stay. With the travel arrangements out of the way, he returned to marking up the manuscript.
The Middle West. To Dean Hardeman it had consisted only of an expanse of squared-off farm land to be flown over as quickly as possible en route from one coast to the other. Except for a couple of trips to Chicago while flogging his earlier books, he had never set foot in the Middle West. Although he had not joined in the general Eastern Seaboard attitude of condescension toward the people who lived here, Hardeman had never really thought much about them.
He left the jumbo jet in Chicago and flew in a smaller aircraft to Indianapolis. The air taxi was a sturdy twin-engine Beechcraft operated by a taciturn man in a Chicago Cubs baseball cap. Hardeman found that skimming low over the forests and farms of central Indiana gave him a much sharper sensation of flying than traveling several miles up in the pressurized cabin of a jet airliner. He was sorry to see this leg of his journey end when they landed at the small Belford airport.
Finding a cab to take him into town took the better part of an hour. There was no great demand for cabs in Belford. Hardeman finally turned up a grossly fat man who operated a one-car taxi company.
The driver, wheezing heavily, eyed Hardeman’s single bag suspiciously. “That all the luggage you got?”
“It’s enough to carry my burglar tools.”
No smile. A shrug of the fat shoulders. “Where you want to go?”
“Just drive around the town for a while.”
Perceptible warming at the thought of a hefty fare, “Sure thing. There ain’t much to drive around, but I’ll show you what there is.”
Hardeman sat back in the seat letting the visual impressions of the town wash over him. He scarcely listened to the rambling comments of the driver as he pointed out the town’s leading industries and objects of local pride like the new high school.
The main street of Belford — called, inevitably, Main Street — was compact and clean. There was a Montgomery Ward, a Sears (What ever happened to Roebuck?), two hotels, several taverns, a Rexall drugstore, a McDonald’s, and lots of small shops selling hardware, yard goods, garden equipment, and work clothes.
Many of the buildings along Main Street still had the honest brick and granite faces they had worn since around 1910. Others had gone modern and presented glass and aluminum façades that seemed jarringly out of place. What a pity, thought Hardeman, that this outpost of Americana should imitate the big cities by slapping a slick veneer of urban renewal on its honest, homely bricks. As soon as the thought hit him, Hardeman smiled at his presumption. Who was he, living minutes away from the towers of Manhattan, to suggest that these people should keep their town a perpetual Disneyland for jaded city dwellers to wander through snuffling with nostalgia for something they never knew? The people of Belford were probably most proud of their new buildings and, like people everywhere, could hardly wait to get rid of the old. Why should they be any different?
Hardeman leaned forward and spoke to the driver. “Do you know where the Thomas Locketts live?”
“Sure do. Hardly anybody in town I don’t know where they live, unless it’s some of the field hands who only come in for the harvest and stay in the boarding houses. The Locketts, though, I guess near everybody knows where they live. Especially now.”
“Why especially now?” Hardeman asked.
“Ain’t you read about the Lockett boy, Billy?”
“A little,” Hardeman admitted.
“Went and killed himself out to California. You a friend of the Locketts?”
“Not exactly.”
“They’re quiet people, Tom and Helen. Too bad their boy had to turn out the way he did.”
“I heard he was doing pretty well,” Hardeman said.
The driver gave a disgusted snort that made his fat cheeks wobble. “Sure, playin’ that rock and roll music, if you want to call it music. Smokin’ that dope too, like as not.”
“More’n likely. They all do.”
“All?”
“All them longhair freaks out to California. Oh, we get a few of them here from up at the normal school, and some of them Indianapolis people with cabins out to the lake, but nothing like California. Out there the hippies just take over, and nobody does a thing about it.”
“Sounds grim,” Hardeman observed.
“You can say that again, brother. I’ve been up to Indianapolis and seen some of the movies they’re putting out these days. Let me tell you, it was filth. Pure filth.”
Hardeman grew weary of the taxi driver’s opinions of current morals. He leaned back in the seat and switched his attention to the scene outside his window. The residential streets of Belford were wide and quiet and lined with big healthy elm trees. The elm leaves were fresh with the bright green of spring.
The Lockett’s house, much like others on the street, was old and sturdy, of white clapboard with a deep front porch.
“You’d better wait for me,” Hardeman said as the driver parked out in front of the house.
“Cost you five dollars an hour.”
“It’s a deal.”
The driver pulled a copy of Field and Stream from the glove compartment and settled down to read as Hardeman got out and went up the concrete walk to the house.
Although the day was bright and dry, he instinctively wiped his feet on the mat before ringing the doorbell. He smiled to see the two hooks screwed into the roof of the porch where a swing once had hung. Too bad it was gone, he thought. As a city boy, one thing he had never done was sit in a porch swing.
Thomas Lockett answered the door. He was in shirtsleeves with his collar open and his sleeves rolled up two turns. In his hand was a copy of the Louisville Courier-Journal.
“Mr. Lockett, my name is Dean Hardeman. I’m working with people who knew your son in California, writing a book about him. If you can spare me the time, I’d like to talk to you a little about Billy.”
Thomas Lockett’s face remained impassive. He did not stand away from the door. “There’s one thing I want to know first. Did you have anything to do with that so-called funeral out there?”
“No.”
“It will be a long time before I forget that,” Mr. Lockett said. “And a long time before I forgive the people responsible for it.”
“It was in doubtful taste,” Hardeman agreed, “but I’m sure the people there meant no disrespect to Billy or to you.”
Helen Lockett came through a swinging door and crossed the living room to join her husband. She brought with her the aroma of fresh baked bread. Thomas Lockett made the introductions.
“Please come in, Mr. Hardeman,” she said. “I hope you can stay for dinner.”
“Thank you, but I’ve got a car waiting for me outside. I’ll eat at the hotel.”
“The hotel food in this town is unfit for human consumption,” said Thomas Lockett. He looked out the open door toward the street. “I see you’ve got Art Ingersoll’s cab. If I know that fat blabberbouth, he’s already given you a few of his own notions about Billy.”
“As a matter of fact, he has,” Hardeman admitted.
“Why don’t you pay him off, and I’ll take you to your hotel after dinner.”
After a token protest, Hardeman accepted the invitation. He went out and settled with Ingersoll, who was surly about having his expected windfall cut off; then he carried his small bag back into the Lockett’s house.
Dinner was a generous pot roast in rich brown gravy. Potatoes, carrots and onions were roasted and browned with the meat. They drank rich coffee and finished up with squares of dark chocolate cake. Hardeman found the meal delicious and said so, to Mrs. Lockett’s obvious pleasure.
After dinner Mr. Lockett and Hardeman took second cups of coffee into the living room and sat down. Mrs. Lockett stayed behind to clean up the dinner dishes. She would just stack them in the sink, she said, then join the men.
The living room, or front room as Hardeman noted the Locketts called it, was furnished with overstuffed pieces from forty years ago and marble-top tables and shelves that used to be called knicknacks, along with newer things. There was no apparent attempt at achieving an effect or a certain style, but the room had a charm that made you want to smile when you walked in. Thomas Lockett settled into what was obviously “his chair.” Hardeman sat in a comfortable wingback facing him.
“All right, what was it you wanted to know about Billy?” Mr. Lockett asked.
“What kind of a boy was he?” Hardeman said, thinking as he did so how inane it sounded.
Thomas Lockett thought it over. “I guess if I had to come up with just one word to describe Billy, the word would be lucky.”
“Lucky?” Hardeman repeated.
“I’ll try to explain. Billy was my son, and I was always proud of him, you understand, but the truth is he was never awfully good at anything. Not bad, but just not outstanding. But one way or another, he always made out. He was no better than average in school, I could see that, but when the important exam came up Billy would somehow get the right answers and come out near the top. He played on the baseball team, that was the only sport he made a letter in. Outfielder. He couldn’t hit much, but it seemed when the winning runs were on base he could bloop one off the end of the bat that would drop just out of somebody’s reach, and Billy would be the hero of the game. Luck.”
Thomas Lockett paused to take a look back at the closed door leading to the kitchen. “I’d never say this with my wife present, but I personally don’t think Billy was much of a musician, either. I played some dance band trumpet in my younger days, so I know something about it. It’s true that Billy worked as hard at his music as he did at anything, which is not to say he knocked himself out. The thing is, he just never had any real talent. Not for music. What he had was a genius for making people like him and believe in him. That’s what came through when he played and sang — likability, believability. Luck.”
Abruptly the father’s shoulders slumped, and his face seemed to age. “But when Billy’s luck ran out, it ran out all at once, didn’t it.”
Mrs. Lockett came in from the kitchen, saving Hardeman from having to respond.
“Is anyone ready for another piece of cake?”
Both men declined the cake, and Mrs. Lockett took a seat near her husband.
“So you’re writing a book about our Billy,” she said.
“That’s right.”
“I’m afraid I’ve never read any of your books, Mr. Hardeman. But then, I never was much of a reader. Maybe Thomas has.”
“Afraid not,” said Mr. Lockett. “I don’t read much but John D. MacDonald any more. Everybody else is writing pornography or trying to sell me his crackpot political ideas. Pornography puts me to sleep and I can come up with my own crackpot ideas.”
Hardeman smiled, liking the man.
“I hope your book will treat Billy kindly,” Mrs. Lockett said. There was an unexpected quaver in her voice. “The things they’ve been writing in some of the magazines aren’t very nice.”
“I try never to write unkindly about anyone,” Hardeman said.
Mrs. Lockett looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “Maybe you’d like to see some pictures of Billy when he was a little boy?”
“Yes, I would.”
Billy’s mother left the room and returned with a thick album of photographs. Hardeman moved over to the sofa and sat next to her as she turned the pages. Thomas Lockett stayed in his chair.
The earliest pictures were of a round-faced, smiling baby posed in a crib or holding a toy or in the arms of a younger, slimmer Helen Lockett. The pictures that followed were those that might be found in any family album. A bundled up Billy standing next to a snowman. Billy holding onto a pet dog. Billy on a new bicycle. Billy looking uncomfortable in a necktie. Hardeman could almost see the boy grow before his eyes as a plant seems to grow in stop-motion photography.
Conspicuously missing were any pictures of Billy with friends his own age. Even in group shots he always stood a little apart. A solitary boy. A loner. A gift for being loved, but unable to love in return?
The last picture of Billy in the album showed a teenage boy with longish blond hair, holding a guitar. The boy’s eyes had the distracted look of seeing something beyond the camera that was so familiar in later pictures of Billy.
“He was sixteen here,” Mrs. Lockett said. “It was taken just before he left home. We have a scrapbook of pictures and clippings about Billy after he became famous, but I don’t suppose you’d want to see them.”
“Thanks, I’ve probably seen most of those,” Hardeman said. He cleared his throat, wanting to ask more, but reluctant to bring back painful memories to these people. “How … how did you feel about Billy’s leaving home?”
Thomas Lockett answered. “We were absolutely against it. I’d always thought Billy would go on to college, but the parents don’t make those decisions any more. Billy was too restless. He had a year left to go in high school. There was no way to stop him, so all I could do was help him. Billy did agree that if he wasn’t able to support himself in two years he’d come home and finish school. Well, I told you about Billy’s luck. A year after he left home he was working steadily in clubs and making records. Then he signed a contract with Al Fessler, and you know what happened after that.”
Mrs. Lockett put the album away, they all had another piece of cake, and at eight o’clock Thomas Lockett drove Hardeman to his hotel. It was a turn-of-the-century brick building with small, clean rooms that smelled of fresh linen. The night was so quiet it seemed lined with velvet. Hardeman slept like an innocent and was up early for a huge breakfast before taxiing to the airport to catch the twin Beech out of town.
On the flight back to Los Angeles Hardeman penciled a few notes on his impressions of Belford and the meeting with the Locketts. He read the notes over and nodded to himself, satisfied. He knew the writing would go well today, and tomorrow he would be with Joyce.