Lani had to be at least my age: 52. But the outfit she wore: flannel shirt, tied in a bow over her thick waist, jeans tight enough to power a small town with the abundant static electricity and a straw cowboy hat tilted rakishly over her heavily-lined eyes—wistfully spoke of the desire to be someone much younger. Her freckles, like disobedient Israelites, were swallowed by the lines on her face that became mellifluous when she said: howdy.
I shook her bony hands and explained I was not a visitor, but rather the newest employee of the Johnny Cash Museum and Event Space. Her face went blank and then, as if she was a computer rebooting, offered a wider smile. “Well, howdy indeed. Welcome aboard, honey.” Her smile may not have been sincere, but still posed a risk to diabetics. “Where they got you working? Admissions? The gift shop? In the office?”
“Guard,” I said, fishing for the slip the man in the office gave me.
“Niiice. What exhibit? Early childhood? Seventies Room? The later years?” She spoke with the intensity of a witch trying to conjure a spell she was sure would be ineffective.
I unfolded the paper and read “Hurt Room.” Odd name, isn’t it? It’s not like Johnny was into S&M, right? I know he did some drugs but that was as bad as it got, right”?
Her face went from lily white to ashen. She chewed on the chapped flecks of her lower lip. Narrowing her eyes, her pupils pivoted rapidly in case of being overheard. “Have you ever been to this museum?” She asked quietly and quickly. Was I supposed to nod or write down my answer?
“No, ma’am,” I said. I’ve never been to Nashville before.” Ma’am? Where the hell did that come from? I was born in New York, grew up outside of Boston, went to college in Michigan, moved to Ohio and left my broken marriage and children there when I was transferred to Nashville. The company didn’t even give me a chance to unpack before informing me that both my new and my old job back in Ohio had been eliminated. They offered a severance pittance, but it was far from ideal for paying for housing and food. And that’s why I took the help wanted sign on the front window of the museum as a sign from the Fates that I could earn some cash from Cash before I made any choices about what came after next.
“They didn’t give you a tour of the museum, did they?” She shook her head and muttered angrily about not knowing how they expect to keep anybody if they are going to play tricks on the unsuspecting by throwing rookies into the Hurt Room.
Watching my impending discomfort, she coaxed an unconvincing smile. “We should get you into a uniform. What size do you wear?”
Being unusually tall and slim, what she gave me looked more like a FEMA tarp than a uniform. “Sorry, we just keep the more popular sizes in stock,” she said, as if my body shape was a matter of choice. “I am sure they will get you something more fitted if…” Her voice trailed off as if she had suddenly fallen into a deep hole mid-sentence. “Come on, dear, let’s get you to your post,” she said, clearing her throat as if she was recalling a sad sad memory.
She led me into a small door behind the counter and into the childhood of Johnny Cash. Dirt poor, broken mementos without the slightest hint of the man he was to become. “Isn’t it just wonderful,” she said, pointing at a broken rattan chair. “It’s like we were there. No matter what we went through was nothing compared to what the boy in black went through. Though humble, our roots could never be humbler than JC’s.” She took a deep breath as if in an opium den. Her voice became dreamy in an “ain’t-gonna-happen-but-that’s-okay kinda way. “You have to think—if Johnny could make, why not me? Do you know what I mean?”
I didn’t. But I nodded to be polite and tried to find a desiccated cotton bush branch interesting. “Move along,” she said, suddenly giddy. “That’s going to be your job. Move ‘em along, especially the Japanese tourists. They love Johnny and they chatter like chipmunks and you gotta keep ‘em moving or will have a traffic jam. But then again, nobody really stays long in the Hurt Room. Except you, of course.”
She surged me through Johnny’s early life, though his military service, through his marriage and moving to Memphis and singing with the million-dollar quartet. And then it was a blur through the many successes and many slippages. Relics of his friendships with Elvis, Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis beckoned behind glass cases. Past a couple of mannequins wearing concert apparel and a display of well-used guitars.
Suddenly, it became cold and quiet as if a shroud had been cast. Simple sad guitar strumming and heavy piano keys throbbing. A voice came from the bottom of grave as they were shoveling the dirt in. It wasn’t so much as singing as a grating wailing. Lani looked like a mouse trapped mid-floor by an encroaching cat strategically placed between her and the safety of her hole. The voice clearer, but no less gravely:
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt
The Hurt Room was darker than the rest of the museum in lumens and mood. I did not suspect that anything could be more depressing that Johnny’s hardscrabble childhood. I stood corrected, because according to Lani that was where I would stand for four hours at a time with a 15-minute break. The sentence cut in half by a 30-minute lunch hour.
The room’s grotesque gloom was lit only by a few anemic can lights and a widescreen television mounted on the black back wall. It blinked to life with baroque images that would make Roman Polanski shiver.
There was Johnny, weeks away, I assumed, from playing in the Grand Ole Opry in the sky, cackling about a needle tearing a hole from a crooked and ragged mouth that looked like it was added as an afterthought. The video started off wrist-slashing depressively, and steadily embraced an ever-expansive hopelessness despite interspersing home footage of what alleged to be happier times.
There’s Johnny, old, frail, depressed, looking like he had the wrong date for the Last Supper. June stands on a staircase above him, either ashamed by the exploitation of their decrepitude or simply lacking the strength to get off the set. Jesus shows up in time to get nailed to the cross while Johnny’s life passes in front of his and my eyes. Johnny closes the piano fallboard like a coffin lid and the television fades to black only to reanimate seconds later an eternal loop that made me feel like a drowning man grasping an anchor for buoyancy.
Lani pointed to the door that led out to the gift shop, explaining my job was to hustle people out. Hustle them out? The space had all the charm of an Auschwitz dressing room. Only the feeble and the sado-masochistic could last more than 20 seconds, glad to part with whatever remained of their credit line to wash themselves clean of the existential dread that awaits us all soon enough.
They were the lucky ones; the survivors of the flood. They got to close the door behind them, leaving me and the next lambs-to-slaughter behind. As I stand there, face to face, with a singing momento-mori, Lani’s words haunt me. If Johnny overcame poverty to become a world-wide celebrity only to slip into the void—what chance did I have when twelve dollars and fifty cents an hour didn’t buy much in the gift shop?