Another story: I was about 7 or 8, and Townes was living in that tin-roofed shack in that holler south of Nashville. I am not sure if it had lights (other than lanterns), and I think there was a sink, but I know it was heated by a stove and you had to shit in an outhouse. People just pissed wherever. At the time, he was with his teenaged bride Cynthia, who was closer in age to me than he was her, and I was even more in love with her than I had been with Susanna, and she kind of saw me as a little brother / ally. She had fallen in love with Colorado Townes: sober, mystical, horse-riding traveler...But she ended up with Tennessee Townes who was surly, cynical and very rarely sober. Like most posters here.
Anyway, he had a few neighbors. One of them was a half-Japanese, half American Indian maniac named Bobby Iwa. That dude made Townes look like Billy Graham when it came to chemicals. He lived in the shack nearest to Townes, and oddly enough it was more technologically advanced. I think it had a toilet. Anyway, I viewed him about the same way Huck Finn did Injun Joe. I was convinced he was gonna throw a Bowie knife at me and kill me some day.
And there were always lots of visitors out there. Guy. Richard Dobson, criminally unknown and recently departed. And Steve Earle, who around that time was like a big brother to me.
My dad has said that after he left my heroin-addicted mom, and couldn't get custody of me, he engineered it so that Steve would move in to his former home as a day to day positive influence on me. Yes. Steve fucking Earle was viewed as a stabilizing influence on me...And to be fair, his addictions at that time were far less advanced that my mom's, and he was a good influence. He is about 15 years older than me and I can remember him treating me like a pesky little brother. We'd even wrestle and shit, and I remember him pinning me and giving me what he called "Texas titty twisters." He was only mildly sadistic. And he had that cackling laugh. Nobody has a laugh exactly like Steve's...He lived in our treehouse for a while and then moved in to the regular house when the weather got cold. And my mom hooked up with one of his San Antonio runnin' buddies, got knocked up, and eventually married him, and had a total of three kids with him before her life spiraled out of control again decades later.
Getting ahead of myself...Like Cynthia and me, Steve and I had a borderline sibling relationship and sometimes the craziness of the older crowd out at Townes's shack would make us both want to take a breather. Guy and Townes would haze him unmercifully sometimes, and if I was around, he would take me on a walk like a pet dog. And one day he brought his pistol with him. Or one of his pistols. He had a mess of them in those days. I think this was the replica cap n' ball Colt he sings about in "Devil's Right Hand." And he told me he was gonna let me shoot it.
Fuckin' A right, Bubba. I was gonna get to toss some lead. I'd never even shot a BB gun up to that point.
So we got a safe distance from the vodka and heroin party roiling up at Chez Van Zandt and went down the holler where even my second-grade ass couldn't do much damage. He told me about the safety and the chamber and all that shit and handed me the gun, and it was so much heavier than any of the toy pistols I'd ever held. The grip sure did feel good though. He put a can on top of a fencepost and then told me how to sight and aim. I nodded solemnly, raised the pistol, and pulled the trigger.
FUCKING KA BOOM. I'd never heard anything so loud. The recoil jerked the gun past my right ear. That can sat up there, unmoved.
Steve was over there cackling like a hyena.
"Dirty Harry you ain't, boy," he said. And he was right.