High Strung Read online

  As devout as he was, Cafton didn’t belong to a church. Never had. He was his own church. He had seen too much negativity, hatred, and meanness perpetrated in the name of the Lord by countless organized religions to cleave himself to a specific doctrine. But all of his life he had been very spiritual, devout to a higher power, the divine promise, in his own way. He earnestly prayed in the morning, before he fell asleep at night, and at moments throughout the day when he felt the need. When something was heavy on his heart, he prayed about it. When something wonderful happened, he stopped on the spot and, either out loud if he was alone or in his mind if others were around, he confessed that he was aware it was all by God’s hand, and he thanked Him for it.

  He also sometimes felt the need to pray for himself between his morning and evening prayers. Lord, give me strength or Lord, please give me a sign were frequent invocations. Other times, the need was for others, like people inside a screaming ambulance, or when he heard about a friend or stranger having a difficult time, or when he saw a person or animal in distress.

  As a young man, he decided that praying for specific things, specific outcomes, might be presumptuous, for who was he to ask God to do what he wanted? It was obvious he didn’t know God’s divine plan for him or anyone else. He realized there was always more to a situation than someone who isn’t living it can understand. Even in situations of life and death, he felt it was presumptuous to ask God for a specific outcome. A person in a grim, irreversible health condition might be miserable or in intractable pain. Was it Cafton’s prerogative or even in the best interest of the person for him to pray that person would continue to live? Certainly not.

  So Cafton pretty much stopped praying for specific things and precise outcomes. He relinquished his feeble, unenlightened will to that of the omnipotent Lord and simply asked the Lord for the ability and strength to do His will.

  Cafton long ago gave up trying to understand why the Lord did certain things that seemed to be hurtful or allowed painful things to happen. First, it wasn’t Cafton’s right to judge the Lord. Second, Cafton often saw well after the fact how it was the best outcome after all.

  After his mom died on a tiny stage in a Birmingham dive bar, with unfulfilled dreams of going to Nashville to make it big in the music industry, Cafton struggled mightily to find any silver lining in her death. The one person who believed in him and who loved him was taken away. He had been left alone at fifteen years old. He was, in essence, an orphan. He was uneducated, or at least didn’t have the standard paper trail that others decided were evidence of an education. And his only experience was running a bar. He felt lost and alone and hopeless.

  He asked the Lord for guidance, and he got it. He went to Nashville, made a good living in his upscale bar and café, and worked his way deep into the music industry by publishing chart-topping songs. Now knowing what he did about the music industry, he understood why the Lord took his mom. He spared her the heartache and probable failure she would have met in the difficult, fickle business, but allowed Cafton to do the work and take the punishment to honor her and her name in Nashville.

  Accordingly, Cafton prayed for comfort, guidance, strength, peace, and blessings for himself and others. He trusted the Lord to know what kind of comfort, guidance, strength, peace, and blessings each of us needs. Cafton didn’t know if his prayers did any real good, but he knew they couldn’t do any harm.

  Without the benefit of a church, Cafton believed. He prayed, and he was, by his assessment, blessed. Every day, in many ways, some he didn’t even know about.

  “Dag, let’s say our prayers and then get some breakfast.” Cafton closed his eyes, cleared his mind, and talked with God.

  He commenced his prayers, as always, by giving thanks. He gave thanks for everything from his very life and the lives of those people in his life to simple but fundamental things like food, a home, Dagwood, friends, and his health. His prayers were mostly gratitude, followed by a few specific guidance requests for difficulties he knew for sure he needed to call on the Lord’s help to solve or to make right. Then he usually wrapped up his prayers with appreciations for yet unknown blessings to be bestowed that day. By the time he completed his prayers, he was totally at peace, which set his mood for the rest of the day.

  Today, he awoke refreshed. There was a noticeable absence of harassing phone calls last night, allowing him to sleep straight through to the morning until Dag rudely woke him. “Thank you, Lord,” Cafton added as a PS to this morning’s prayers.

  He got out of bed, stretched a bit, glanced in the antique dresser mirror, and ran his fingers front to back and downward through his cinnamon-colored hair, trying to look less like a ginger cockatiel. He slipped into his red tartan flannel robe and New England moccasin slippers, and padded downstairs to the kitchen to fix breakfast for them. Dagwood followed him, brushing up against his leg as they made the familiar trek.

  Quiet. Even their footsteps were quiet.

  Cafton popped open a can of highfalutin, disgustingly stinky, gourmet, fishy cat food for Dag. He toasted an English muffin, slathered it with cream cheese, and cranked up some fresh-brewed, kick-ass Ethiopian dark coffee for him. They settled into the antique, whitewashed breakfast table and chairs tucked into the pastel yellow-and-white breakfast nook. They watched the sun rise, embellishing the baby-blue sky with promising, encouraging swaths of peach and lavender to start the day.

  “This is the kind of day that can change a life, Dagwood. Full of fresh hope,” he predicted. “I just feel it.”

  Cafton sat at one side of the table, the café window to his right elbow. Dagwood was in his usual place, posing on his Cheshire Cat placemat on the table with his bowl in front of him and the window to his left. Outside, almost within reach under and beside the window, were the winter bones of blue powder puff hydrangeas and cerise crepe myrtles contrasted with a forest green, espaliered pyracantha with its tiny, apple-like red fruits against his home’s brick wall.

  Cafton had been a natural vegetarian before he knew it. As a kid, he tasted his way through his world. Out of curiosity, he had tasted those tiny pyracantha fruits, not knowing that they are supposedly poisonous. They had tasted vaguely like overripe apples. Apparently you had to eat more than three of them at a time to be stricken ill. He had also tasted the miniscule okra-pod-like fruits and the shamrock leaves of the lowly oxalis weed. They tasted lemony and sort of like mild tomatillos. No side effects. Sipping the dew from honeysuckle blossoms was heavenly. Snacking on wild crab apples, persimmons, and plums was a crap shoot. The ripe ones were delicacies, while the under-ripe fruits were inedible. Under-ripe persimmons in particular were the worst. Not toxic, but you wouldn’t know it. They were so stringent, they’d give you a pucker you were afraid might be permanent.

  The neighbor’s dining room window, adorned with old-fashioned, delicate lace window dressing, was directly across the two-strip concrete driveway that straddled a stripe of consistently winter-resilient and dutifully cheerful white Dutch clover. Clover tastes like you would think. Clover-y.

  “A new morning, a new piece of God’s art,” Cafton shared with Dag, who looked up briefly, decided that he didn’t care, and stuck his nose back in his hand-painted ceramic food bowl.

  “Dag, if you were a dog, I’d take you with me today. I could use the company. It’s beautiful out there. Cold, but beautiful. When the sun shines, you believe that spring is just around the corner.” Cafton turned the small television on to catch the local weather. “Yep. Just thirty-nine degrees now, with a high of forty-nine around three o’clock. I’d love to stay here with you, but I have to go down to the studio first thing this morning and check on that album. I’m hoping I’ll find a clue as to what happened to Dangcat while I’m there.”

  Dagwood answered with an unhurried downward-dog yoga pose, stretching across the table and along the windowsill in a newly-risen sunbeam. He then began to fastidiously clean his face, preparatory to a post-breakfast nap upstairs in another patch of sunshine on
the bed. Dagwood was solar powered. He would be recharging.

  Monday morning traffic in Nashville was spotty gridlock. Cafton avoided the interstates like the plague, due to impassable stretches replete with angry or inattentive drivers, and accident-inducing Trucker’s Curve and Spaghetti Junction snarls. He preferred to travel the well-worn streets and avenues, which he knew like the back of his hand, avoiding the usual obstructions there, as well.

  Merriepennie Music was only two streets over and two blocks up from his Music Row home. Just a short jaunt. Most days he walked to the studio, taking stock of the changing landscapes and waving hello to anyone who happened to cross his path. But today he drove so he could swing by the Donut Hut before the traffic on Hillsboro Road got slammed. Cafton adored their fresh, handmade donuts, plus, if he was lucky, he’d run into his pal Minnie Pearl there. It was her favorite donut joint, too.

  Nashville was a big city with the heart of a small town. It had an abundance of metropolitan-esque offices, attractions, and businesses intermingled with local, hometown gems. All were within a ten-minute drive from his home. Cafton preferred to support the local businesses. He ignored the cookie-cutter, predictable, soulless franchise businesses, opting instead to frequent the beloved, insider, non-tourist establishments like the Donut Hut. They were part of the Nashville family, like Cafton and Bynum.

  The saying goes that there are no real locals in Nashville; everyone is an import. But unlike so many other towns, a birth certificate verifying your first breath was taken here in Nashville was not mandatory to being family. You were part of the family if you simply loved the city and took it as your home.

  With so little traffic on the road this early, in five minutes Cafton was at the intersection of Hillsboro and Woodmont, just in time to witness a petrifying crash. To his horror, from his right, two cars, one behind the other and no one else around them, crashed into each other. One car came from behind, apparently in a rush to get in front of the other car. It then stopped short, right at the traffic light. The other car rear-ended it. Boom, crunch.

  “How the hell? Two cars besides me on the road and they manage to hit each other?” Cafton blurted. For a couple of seconds, he was frozen in place, just sort of assessing the situation. Snapping to, he drove his car across the street in front of the crash and around to the Woodmont Baptist Church parking lot to park. He ran into the street to the accident scene, praying that everyone was okay. By the time he got there, both drivers were out of their vehicles, cussing a blue streak at each other. Fancy new red import car chap, who rear-ended shoddy old brown junker car, was standing by his crushed hood, screaming at junker guy about his poor driving abilities, his perceived lack of gray matter, and his “piece of shit” car. Junker guy responded—in a voice that could have split atoms—that imported car guy rear-ended him, so he was at fault for not paying attention, and upped the ante by calling him a string of unsavory terms for a woman. It was like he was trying to provoke the import-car fellow. It worked.

  Luckily the Donut Hut was just two blocks away, meaning cops were just two blocks away. They were on the scene mere seconds after the brawl broke out. The cops pried the drivers apart, each wresting a driver to the side and calming him down. Then they started asking questions and filling out paperwork.

  As Cafton headed back to his car, a cop pointed a finger at him and barked, “You a witness?”

  “Well, not really.” Cafton didn’t want to get involved. This wasn’t on his agenda for today. Besides, neither import-car man nor junker-car guy seemed like they would take kindly to a witness if the witness didn’t side with them. One way or the other, someone was going to be angry at him. It would be a no-win proposition for Cafton.

  “Yeah, he was right there when it happened. He saw the whole thing and then came right over.” The import-car man ratted Cafton out, indicating Cafton’s location when the collision occurred.

  “Go on back to your car. Stay there. I’ll talk with you when I get done here.” Cafton was growing weary of talking to cops. First when his house was firebombed, and he still had to go talk to Heckle about that and the phone calls, and now this. He was getting blue fatigue.

  Cafton sat impatiently in his car, listening to the radio, until the cop approached. He got out of his car to speak with the cop. “Whadya see?” the cop growled.

  “It was all really quick. The brown car cut in front of the red car. Then the red car ran into the brown car.” Short and sweet. No judgments. Just the facts.

  “Why did the brown car stop? Did the light change?” the officer demanded. Cafton felt like he had done something wrong by not being more attentive just prior to the accident.

  “No, I still had a red, so they must have had a green.” Cafton fidgeted with his car keys, unconsciously rattling them against his thigh like a tambourine. The cop glared down at the keys, then back up at Cafton. Cafton wrapped the keys in his palm to keep them quiet.

  “Did the brown car have a turn signal on? Why did he change lanes? Anyone around them? Anyone have passengers?” The cop continued the interrogation.

  “I have no idea. I was to the side. I couldn’t see much, really. I’m not Carnac the Magnificent. Maybe the drivers can tell you.” The cop scowled at Cafton from underneath the glossy patent leather bill of his hat.

  “Don’t get smart. Could the red car have avoided the collision? Was he speeding? Was he looking at anything other than the road? How about road rage? Were they having a conflict when this happened?” The cop was checking off small boxes on a police report snapped to his aluminum clipboard. He seemed to be miffed that this inconvenient accident had interrupted him mid-donut. He was eager to resume his breakfast.

  “No. I don’t know. Uh, it all happened so fast, but there was no way the red car could have stopped that quickly.” Cafton shrugged his shoulders and shoved his hands and keys in his jeans pockets, slowly making himself less visible, smaller. He felt insufficient, like he somehow should have all the answers and had failed the cops and the drivers. “That’s just my opinion. I really don’t know anything more.” In his mind, he was ten years old again and being questioned by police about why his father was lying in the next room with a knife sticking out of his chest.

  “Name and phone number,” the cop demanded.

  “Mine? My name and phone number?” Cafton felt silly as soon as the words left his mouth. Of course his phone number. How would he know the drivers’ names and phone numbers? Pffft. His face flushed crimson.

  The cop rolled his eyes. “Yes. Your name and phone number.”

  After jotting down Cafton’s info in the witness box on the police report, the cop dismissed him with a stubby thumb’s-up as he walked away toward the other cop. Cafton was free to go, to resume his agenda for the day.

  A half-dozen cake donuts with milk chocolate icing for him, and a flat of assorteds for the label staff on the front seat, Cafton headed toward the office. He navigated into the narrow alley, expertly avoiding the tire-eating pot holes and beat-up metal trash cans standing guard on both sides. He slowly crept into the crunchy gravel parking lot behind Merriepennie Music. It was empty. Good. Well good, except he would have loved to see Dangcat’s car there. It had been missing since he disappeared.

  Cafton hoped to get to the label before anyone else so he wouldn’t be bombarded with routine work questions and tasks. Those could come later. Today, he was on a mission: to try to find out what happened to Dangcat.

  He parked as close to the back door as possible. He took a full breath and slowly exhaled as he removed his JFK-style tortoiseshell sunglasses, placed them in their leather case, and then put the case in the middle console compartment, all the while making sure he had the building’s security alarm code in mind before unlocking the back door and punching it into the hallway keypad. He needed to center himself. This was his pre-entry routine to reduce his code-entry anxiety.

  “I sure don’t want or need yet another encounter with Nashville’s best in blue this week,” he fu
med. His blood pressure was already through the roof. His ears radiated heat, and he heard them ringing with a constant, high-pitched whine. His keys slightly jingled in his hand as he approached the building, plodding through the deep gravel.

  “This is why I don’t have one of these damn things at home,” he reminded himself.

  Deactivating the alarm always spiked his blood pressure. He steadied himself with a deep breath, letting it out slowly like he was deflating as he stood under the burgundy-and-white striped metal awning on the small concrete stoop at the back door.

  He had a history of accidentally triggering the alarm from fat-fingering the code on the key pad or inexplicably drawing a blank when it came time to enter the code. Thankfully he was always able to dash to answer the alarm service’s phone call and give the secret word in time to cancel the cops from showing up to accost him. That didn’t, however, stop the deafening shriek of the alarm from going off until the security company reset the system. When that happened, Cafton had to go out, face the, uh, alarmed neighbors, and apologize all over himself to them. Not that it was likely this time of the day, but an alarm could easily disrupt a recording session, since several other studios were within earshot.

  “Here we go.” He shimmied to release the tension in his shoulders and hands.

  He methodically whispered a play-by-play of every step in the process to himself as he performed them.

  “Unlock the door. Done.”

  “Remove the keys. Done.”

  “Open the door. Done.”