Low Country, J. Jones [top 10 best books of all time .TXT] 📗

white-haired. Described by newspapers as stylish and likable, as well as a con man. In the uniform of the men whose money he was so good at stealing. Collared polo shirt, wingtips of real Italian leather that fell off the back of a truck. Slacks of plaid or plain polyester with crease too prominent and waist too high. All the better for deep pockets, my dear.

He walked into my granddaddy’s office on Twenty-ninth Avenue and laid out a presentation of such improbable grandiosity that it had to be well thought-out. “Howdy, howdy,” Granddaddy would’ve said as he extended his hand.

“Mr. Jones, they tell me you’re the man to see in this town,” this stranger would have appealed to his vanity as he looked around at the peach carpet, his couch striped in burgundy and hunter green. Golf trinkets and pictures given as Father’s Day gifts lining the long tables of dark wood.

This is the part where we arrive finally at a moment of comeuppance. Denny was pushing a scam from top to bottom, and he called it the Carolina Amphitheater. This is the last scene where we see Granddaddy in a state of wealth and possibly a state of sanity.

How did he find my granddaddy? It used to be that when a bank refused a loan, they might recommend going to see somebody with large private funds. I think it more likely that Denny found his name on an official Suckers List, a directory of elderly, sick, or just plain gullible that circulates among scam artists.

His audacity made Denny a popular man in South Carolina, and like all con men, he picked up quick the language of the land. I have heard him called in tones of derision a carpetbagger by old Southern ladies, my nana included, for whom the mere approximation of profanity provoked a week of apologies. The only other person I’ve heard Nana take a cussword to is Uncle Mike. Denny had a vision, you see. A razzle-dazzle vision! An entertainment venue so grand, so majestic it would make every investor a millionaire ten times over. Right in the middle of Marion County, an hour and a half inland from Myrtle Beach and surrounded by two hours of swamp and farmland on all sides. He’d been arrested already for pulling the same scam, selling a town in Pennsylvania on a mountain amphitheater and lining his pockets with this small town’s cash before skipping town. If anybody comes at you saying they’ve got a vision, best to keep on walking because the only future they’ve seen is the one where they have all your money. Granddaddy was already a millionaire when Denny showed up to his office, but greed is like Low Country quicksand, and once you’ve got your foot in, there’s nothing to do but sink.

Dad had started making the rounds in Nashville by then, playing for tourists walking down Broadway on their way to the Ryman. Between busking in front of Tootsie’s and small-time gigs, Dad found that he needed some company to occupy the time and space formerly filled with all the noise of four kids. He adopted a shaggy brown Newfoundland dog so big there followed a spate of bear sightings in front of the Nashville Coliseum. Dad named the dog Conway, letting the musicians of Music City think he was named after Conway Twitty, when he was named for the town where we were once a happy family. They are bred, these dogs, to rescue the drowning, to pull bodies back to shore when they are drifting under, too tired to go on. Dad could not refuse Granddaddy when he called him up in Nashville and asked for his help with the Amphitheater, even after all the abuse and put-downs. The transmission of fantasies passes as easily across those invisible conduits that pass along hurts. Escape is never a onetime deal.

Denny, as per his usual modus operandi, had declared himself in charge of getting the construction going, after Granddaddy had invested most of his money and talked his brothers and friends into investing their own. Denny blew into town promising to make everyone richer, and I picture him riding out in a Thunderbird like my great-granddaddy’s, piles of cash in the back seat, bills sucked out and swirling in the wind of his French exit. He was a wanted man up north, wanted supposedly by both the mob and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, like the stories about Uncle Keith. It is said that when the feds came down to Myrtle Beach offering him immunity for his scams in Pennsylvania or Lord knows what, he took it and then took off, which might have been his plan all along, if that is what happened. Granddaddy lost millions of dollars, and his best friend would die a broke man. He’d gotten all his brothers in on the deal, and they lost just about as much. Uncle Jack sued Granddaddy and was the only one who got his money back. Until just recently a billboard announcing the Carolina Amphitheater stood over an empty field in Marion, South Carolina, looming over the imagined ruins of the biggest stage in the state.

After the Amphitheater, Dad and his dog, Conway, went back to Nashville full-time. After gigging around town for a while, he landed regular shows at the Bluebird Café, which, if you don’t know, is just about the best place to make a name for yourself if you want to break into songwriting big time. It’s where all the young, pretty faces looking for stardom go to find the words for their voices. At the Bluebird, he sang stories about losing the battle with alcohol and women’s fingernails running down his back. One night after a show, he drank in the dawn with Waylon Jennings and Emmylou Harris. He fell in with a new crew of outlaw country musicians and was arrested once or twice. If Conway was in the car when he got pulled over, he’d roll