Free Moody Food by Ray Robertson Page B

said.
    â€œBut who?” I interrupted. “Who’s bankrolling us? I mean you—who’s bankrolling you?”
    Thomas put a finger to his lips and shook his head.

    â€œThat is the one and only condition our benefactor has demanded in return for his generous support. Complete anonymity. Rest assured, there is total understanding and an absolute, mutual respect between our camp and him regarding artistic priorities and objectives in terms of what Interstellar North American Music is all about and what we all want it to accomplish. But for reasons he obviously feels are important, only I know who signs the cheques.”
    â€œYou’re getting all this money from somebody you don’t even know?” Christine said. The tone of her voice tasting more like a challenge than an actual question, I worried how Thomas was going to take it. But at least she wasn’t thinking about what he’d meant by talking about her and the band any more.
    But Thomas wasn’t angry at all, just sat down on the paint-chipped white radiator and rested his hands on his knees. “It’s like this,” he said.
    â€œOne day not long before I came up here and met y’all, I’m playing for spare change in front of the post office back home in Jackson when along comes this old-timer in the most beautiful white suit you ever saw hobbling up to drop off a letter. But instead of doing his business and being on his way, he ends up standing there leaning on his cane in that hundred-degree heat watching and listening to me play. Even when I finally say to him, ‘Afternoon, sir,’ he doesn’t blink, just whacks his cane a couple times on the pavement and lifts it off the ground and jabs it in the direction of my guitar like he wants to hear another song.
    â€œI’m no nostalgia act, but it’s just me and him so I think what the heck, I’ll make the old boy’s day, give him what he wants. A little Red Foley, a little Johnny Horton—you know, hits from the forties and early fifties. But I’m no more than a quarter of the way through ‘The Battle of New Orleans’ when the old man raps that cane of his harder than he has yet and barks out at me, ‘If I wanted
to listen to the goddamn radio, boy, I’d listen to the goddamn radio! Tell me something I don’t already know!’
    â€œAnd right then and there I knew that he knew. I knew . So of course I go right into Interstellar North American Music overdrive and let it all hang out, give him the whole white soul royal treatment I knew he’d so deeply appreciate and understand. How long we were together there under that sun I can’t honestly say. Long enough that I couldn’t keep my lids open any longer because of the sweat pouring down my face and stinging my eyes. And when I finally opened them back up, the old man was gone. And I went home knowing that everything— everything —was going to be all right.”
    Thomas leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes.
    Christine and I looked at each other. “But what about the money?” she said.
    â€œYeah,” I said, “what about the money?”
    Thomas slowly reopened his eyes. He looked surprised he was here with us and not back in Mississippi.
    â€œIn my tip jar there was a business card with a P.O. Box number on it and on the other side a short note from the old man saying for me to send him a bill whenever I needed to buy something to help spread the word of my music.”
    Christine and I were thinking the same thing, but, as usual, she was the one to say it.
    â€œThat’s it?” she said.
    â€œI don’t know what you mean, Miss Christine.”
    â€œI mean, you’re saying that all you’ve got to do to rent a studio like this or buy any instrument or new piece of equipment is mail off an invoice to this guy you met only that once and that’s it?”
    â€œWell, yeah, that about sums it