The Battle Hymn Blues

CHAPTER 1: Stoney Nix: The Soundtrack

WHEN MY MOTHER carries three cupcakes to the dinner table on the night of my sixteenth birthday, singing Happy Birthday while my father sits mute as a statue, I don't hear that song. Instead, I hear a song in my head that sounds like a bulldozer raking its claw against a mountain of chalkboards while a flock of blackbirds attacks a deer carcass.  

But I swear I'm not crazy. 

I am not the kind of guy who should be on meds or in an institution, but I do have to admit something. I have a constant soundtrack playing to my life. And it's not from an iPod or anything. It's just there. Music. In my head. I even dream in music. I can't explain it--the music's just always been there. It took me a long time to figure out that not everybody has songs going all day without the help of earbuds. Just me.  

And it's a schizo, wicked mix, too. I am one of those guys who listens to anything. I can go from Beethoven to the Blues, an old folk fiddle jig, a gospel choir on fire, and Chuck Berry back to Tchaikovsky, and I know every note of every song. There are even some melodies that come that I make up out of nowhere. When I'm happy, I hear a crashing high of a symphony, all fireworks and trumpets. And when I'm down, it's a slow sad cello, moaning in a minor key. 

And when I'm really down, which I am today, my sixteenth birthday, I hear impossible music. It doesn't sound like music, or anything. It sounds horrible. It sounds like cats at war with monkeys inside a dumpster full of empty beer bottles. Nobody wants to listen to it.  

But that's the point. That's how life goes sometimes.  

My birthday falls around the beginning of the school year. And with classes starting up and the first football game and marching band practice, it usually gets overshadowed. Which is fine by me. 

This year, like every year, my mother asked if I wanted a party. And like every year, I said no. It's this ritual we have. I say no because, except for my best friend Clyde, there aren't a lot of people I'd want to invite from this town. Even if there were, I wouldn't want people to see where I live. I wouldn't want them to see how my dad decorated the front room of our house as a shrine to Dead Confederates.  

Mom means well and does the best she knows how, and I appreciate that. She's lived her entire life here in Pinewood, Alabama.  

My wish is that I get out of Pinewood as soon as I can. I blow out the candle.  

While we eat our cupcakes, my mother tries to connect with me.  

"How was band practice today?" she asks.  

"Good," I say.  

"Are you ready for your first show tomorrow?" 

"Yes," I say.  

And that's the way it goes--one of those parent/kid going-nowhere talks, but at least she tries. My dad doesn't say anything, as usual. Every year at my birthday I'm reminded why, because of the presents he gives me. Manly things, he thinks. An old-fashioned open-blade straight razor for shaving, last year. Cowboy boots the year before. One time I got a bullwhip. 

I'm sure he was ecstatic to have a baby boy sixteen years ago, and I'm also sure he hasn't known what to make of me for the past ten years. I preferred Ludwig von Beethoven sonatas to Smith and Wesson firearms at age five, and he's been in shock about his son ever since. 

Which is why I'm dreading the moment that comes next. 

My father pulls out an enormous shoebox from under his chair and shoves it towards me. He's got his eyes in a stern gaze of Meaning. I know this is the moment when things could go better, when the day could make a miraculous change to a major key and finish with a triumphant crescendo and maybe I could avoid a full-on emo blues jam session in my brain. But it isn't going to.