Read Online Nine Volt Heart by Annie Pearson - Free Book Online Page A

posted without the site manager’s approval, which I know makes
me a censor of sorts, but I always post everything received that isn’t spam or
ads. The etiquette of the blog is that we just freeze out obnoxious posters by
not responding. Through the blog I met a few old musicology codgers who had
been batting around issues since John Lomax first published and who liked
preserving their arguments on the Internet. A few of them have become personal
friends of mine. This morning, it was [email protected], whom I consider a
good friend, though we’ve never met in person. I learn something interesting
whenever he writes to me.
     
Chas1933: Your help with more recent influences has been invaluable. I’ve about
chased that Gram Parsons thread to its end. Call me an old fart, but it seems
most of his influence centered on who he spent time drinking with.
    Sebastian: That’s too cynical. The real influence was his
insistence on going back to roots and being true to that, instead of listening
to the derivative sound that got radio play in those days.
    Chas1933: I can hear that in his music. I confess I just wanted
to yank your chain since you always insist on going back to roots. Want to help
me with the next thread I’m following? Got time to waste on an old man?
    Sebastian: It’s never a waste. I owe you far more from what
you’ve sent my way in the last couple of years. What’s your next project?
    Chas1933: The Lost Sons. No one has done much research into the
work those boys did. I see it called Hillbilly Bebop, and one guy calls Jesse
Rufus the son of Charlie Mingus and Hank Williams. But I don’t think old Hank
was AC/DC.
    Sebastian: The traditional list of influences starts with the Delmore
Brothers, because of the close harmony. Though I believe for Jesse it was the Sons
of the Pioneers. The Bakersfield country-western work from the Fifties and
Sixties. Gram Parson and Neil Young. And the Beatles.
    Chas1933: I can hear all that. You have an opinion on
everything. What do you hear in Jesse Rufus? You must have given his work a
listen.
 
    I had listened to every line and every note Jesse Rufus
recorded, over and over, hoping for hidden messages, the way kids in the
Sixties listened to Sergeant Pepper and Sympathy for the Devil . I spent the eighth, ninth, and
tenth grades trying to learn every chord, imitating how Jesse Rufus bent notes
with his voice, transcribing chords and words, looking for acrostics or coded
clues, any indication that he knew I existed. I have never longed for a lover
the way I longed to find out that he knew I was in lower Wallingford, wishing
he would come be my real father.
     
Sebastian: Too much tequila, coke, and speed. I can’t hear anything else in the
music. It’s a crying shame.

12 ~ “Wild Card”
    JASON
    W HILE I WAS IN
mid-conversation with Chas, Susi returned, dressed in running shorts and a
long-sleeved athletic shirt. Though she had cooled down enough that she wasn’t
breathing hard, her legs were blotched red from exertion in the cold morning
air, and her skin glistened with perspiration. In a damp t-shirt, more than
just her erect posture showed through. She had the build of a swimmer, strong
shoulders and great lung capacity. Fortunately, she didn’t have breasts to
speak of, and she was small, which has never been a type I’m attracted to.
Otherwise, the pure physicality of her strong body and that
pert—impertinent—way she had of staring deep into a person’s eyes almost had me
crawling on the floor and begging.
    I crumpled up the note that said thanks
for the laundry, see you around and jammed it into my pocket.
    “Oh good, you found everything I left for you.” She smiled. Dammit.
I can’t take much of that. “I’ll make breakfast after I shower. Then I want to
show you the notes and we can talk.”
    The woman had an agenda, with an assumption that I shared
it.
    OK, I should have split the moment she went to shower. That
made two lost chances to just grab