This was around the time my dad's drinking was really getting bad. He had gone off to treatment once already, but he was still drinking. They didn't call it treatment back then; I think they called it a midlife crisis, or nervous breakdown. Hillman tried to stop drinking a few times by then as well, but that didn't stop him and dad from getting together and getting hammered, figuring out all the problems of the world, one Jack and Coke at a time.
Hillman was a singer-songwriter, like his famous brother. Tom loved his writing and supported him all the way, from what I could tell. I am sure Tom had something to do with Hillman getting a record deal and putting out an album. Hillman never had any hits as an artist, though, and he lost his contract after the first record failed to chart, leaving him depressed and even more down on himself. I don't think it helped that Hillman lived in the shadow of a giant, like Tom. Also, he probably had a better singing voice than Tom; there was just no chance of measuring up to Tom's success. He would come over and drink with dad a lot and bitch about how nobody understood him.
He took a liking to me for some reason.
I used to go to work with mom sometimes and hang out at Tom's Toybox Recording Studio, which was on the second floor of the building where her office was. I will never forget the first time I got to watch a recording session go down. I knew right then and there that I was in my element. I didn't know how or why, but I knew that I belonged there.
Hillman did handyman work around the studio, like painting, repairs to the building, and mowing the grass. He was always really cool to me and would talk to me about music and guitar playing. We struck up a conversation one afternoon while he sat, sweating, on the rock wall outside of the studio. He had a Budweiser can in one hand and a Winston in the other. I had been upstairs watching a rock band track songs with Chuck, the house engineer, Hillman had been mowing.
"What's going on up there, Mikey?" he asked, half interested.
"The guitar player can't get his guitar in tune. All the other guys are bitching at him, telling him he shouldn't have changed his strings or something. They just keep doing the same part over and over, and Chuck says he's out of tune. He's still trying to tune that damn thing."
Hillman chuckled and whispered under his breath, "Fuckin' greenhorns."
He tossed the cigarette into the gravel drive. He looked at me and said, "You'll be doing that stuff one day, Mikey. I can tell. Every time I come over to your house, you are playing that damn guitar. You are getting good, man. You've got it, son."
"Thanks, Hillman. Nobody ever told me that before." I really appreciated the compliment, especially coming from him. He could play.
I stood there and talked to him for a few minutes. I fucking loved the guy because he never treated me like a kid. I could tell he was listening to me when I talked instead of zoning out like other adults. We spoke about a Stephen King novel I was reading at the time, The Stand; he also read it. We talked about books from time to time. He caught me reading a few times when he was over at the house. I think it surprised him that I was a reader because I was eaten up with long hair and rock-n-roll.
Once he said, "I'm glad you read books, Mike, maybe it'll balance out what's happening to your brain when you listen to that goddamned KISS."
He hated KISS. I didn't care, 'Love Gun' had just come out; Gene was losing his draw on me... I was returning to Deep Purple, my first love, anyway.
He's sitting there, on the wall, then out of the blue, Hillman says...
"What do you think happens when we die, Mikey?"
I looked at him, wide-eyed. I wondered why he would be asking a fifteen-year-old kid this question. He handed me a Coke out of the cooler, and he grabbed a beer.
"Well," I said tentatively as I cracked the top and heard the hiss of air from the can, "I really don't think we go to Heaven or Hell if that's what you mean."
I felt safe to speak freely with him; if I had said that shit to my grandma, she would have lost her mind.
"I think we probably go back to wherever we were before we got here, which is nowhere," I said.
"Goddamn, son!" he exclaimed. "How old are you?"
"Fifteen," I replied.
"Well, I think you're onto something. Damn it, boy, I'm thirty-six, and I'm just now figuring this shit out."
He paused, his demeanor changed.
"You wanna know why that fucks me up?" He asked.
"Why, Hillman?" I could see he was a little upset.
"Because I lost my wife and my little boy about nine years ago. Everybody's been telling me I will see them again, that we will meet in the afterlife, all of that bullshit. I want to believe it, Mikey, I really do, but there is this feeling I get when I'm lying in bed at night, a feeling of being so alone that I just can't stand it. Lea can be lying right there next to me, but I still feel alone."
Lea was his wife then. I didn't know he was married before; I also never knew he had a son or that he lost them both.
"What happened?" I asked.
"Ahhh, your mama would kill me if I told you all that shit."
"No," I said with gentle concern. I really wanted to know, and I could tell he wanted to talk about it.
"I won't tell her," I said, locking eyes with him.
"I'll never know for sure what happened. I was drunk, of course, really drunk. I was out somewhere when I should have been home." He was tearing up now. He lit another cigarette and looked at me with a pained expression.
"I was too fucking drunk when I got there; I didn't even realize what was going on, at first. Then, I realized it was my house. Somebody had called the fire department, but it was too late by the time they got there. They..." he paused,
"Were gone...Electrical fire. It didn't burn all the way, but they died in their sleep from smoke inhalation, best they could tell. Goddamn Mike, when reality hit me, I wanted to die, too."
He paused. He had stopped crying and was now talking with his head down, cigarette smoke wafting up through his sweaty hair.
"I want to see them again, Mikey. I want to tell them how much I love them and how much I miss them ... how sorry I am," He choked on, sorry.
"But, I know, I will never see them again," he whispered.
I looked at him, and I didn't know what to say. I had nothing.
Fuck, I wouldn't know what to say now. Would you?
I wasn't about to say anything like people at church would say. That shit had always weirded me the fuck out anyway, and I always knew it was bullshit, even as a kid. It was just people spewing shit that they didn't have a clue about to avoid the depth of the incredible loss and pain, applying some cheap cliche to something so real that words are not adequate.
That shit always came across as fake to me; it still does.
No. This man was hurting, and for whatever reason, he trusted me enough to talk about it. There was no answer, and there was nothing else to be said. I didn't judge him either. It was evident that he had been his own judge and jury for years. The only thing I felt at that moment was love for him.
I went over, sat with him on the wall, and gave him a hug.
I started tearing up some too, I felt so bad for him.
We sat together, in silence, for a few minutes, and then he fished out another beer.
"Thanks for listening, Mikey." He said, "You are a good kid, man."
He smiled and said, "I gotta get back to it." He stood up, looked at the lawnmower, then turned to me, "I'll probably see y'all this weekend. Make sure you are around; I've got something I want to show you."
"Okay, Hillman, I'll be around for sure," I said.
He fired up the lawnmower in a cloud of oil smoke, and I went back up to see if the greenhorn had his guitar in tune yet.
******
It was Saturday; I was in my room, practicing on the Electra Les Paul. There was a part in Child in Time off Deep Purple Made In Japan that I had picked up on. My lead playing was coming along, and I had discovered the magic of the 'pull off.' There was a knock on my door.
"Not now!" I shouted, slightly irritated. I thought it was Jamie, looking for Sesame, our Siamese cat.
He loved that cat.
"Mikey! It's me, Hillman."
"Oh shit, come in, Hillman!"
Hillman walked into my poster-covered room, carrying an acoustic guitar. It looked like a Gibson, but I couldn't tell for sure because there was no logo on the headstock.
"Hey, here's what I wanted to show you. Put that thing down for a second, and try this out."
I put my guitar in the case and grabbed the acoustic; it immediately felt good in my hands. I strummed a G. It sounded beautiful too, so rich and full sounding, almost like a piano.
"Wow! This thing feels great," I said, as I plunked out a few more chords and a couple of blues licks. The action was very low and comfortable; the neck was thin and flatter than any other acoustic I had played. The few acoustic guitars I had played were super shitty affairs, with the strings a mile off the frets and a neck like a banana. The finish on this one was strange though, I could tell it was not a factory paint job. This guitar had some miles on it for sure, but the finish seemed like it was done by somebody at home. Not that it was terrible, but it was far from the perfect lines and consistency you see on a guitar from the factory, even after years of use.
I didn't give a shit; it felt so good. It was easy to play for an acoustic.
"Is this a Gibson?" I asked. "It looks like a Gibson headstock, but there is no logo."
"Yep. It's a 1962, J-45." Hillman replied. "I sanded a layer of charred wood off the neck, top, and some of the back. It wasn't burned too awful bad, maybe not even as bad as my shitty paint job!"
He laughed and said, "I always meant to go down to Gibson and get another logo from Cam and put it back on the stock, but I never got around to it." He smiled. "It looks good on you."
It took me a second, then it hit me. This guitar was in the fire at his old house.
I stopped playing and just looked at it. I looked at him; he kind of nodded, so we really didn't have to say anything else.
"I wrote a lot of good songs on that thing Mikey, I think there are a few left in her. I want you to have it; I can't play it anymore."
He said the last part quietly.
"No way!" I said, "I can't take your guitar, Hillman."
"The hell you can't, I already gave it to you!" I could tell he meant it.
"Are you sure?" I still couldn't believe it. He ignored me and said...
"I don't have the case for it, you know, you may have to get one. Hell, it's beat to shit anyway; you could probably drop it off the roof and not hurt it!"
We both laughed. I would find out how true that was over the next twenty years.
Whenever I saw him after that, he would always ask about my playing, and tell me to, "Tell your mama you ain't giving me that damn guitar back."
I am so glad because that guitar opened up my playing so much. I was writing songs left and right, and It made me play better. I still play some of those riffs to this day. The J45 became my constant companion.
Some years passed, and Hillman stopped drinking, so he didn't come around as much. According to mom, he was attending AA meetings; I had no clue what that was then. He was close with mom; I know he confided in her. There were a few times I would hear her on the phone talking to Jacque or Lea about Hillman. She was worried about him, said he was depressed, and struggled to stay sober.
He had apparently sent her some letter in the mail and then come over, begging her to give it back. Whatever was in that letter really upset my mom.
I heard her telling Jacque that he had started drinking again.
I came home one rainy afternoon, ready to smoke some weed, and go jam with the boys, later.
Mom was on the couch, crying.
"Mom, what's wrong?" I asked. She was so upset.
"Oh, Michael," she said between sobs, "It's Hillman. He committed suicide."
"What?"
I heard her though, I just did not want to believe it.
No.
After Mom had calmed down some, she told me as much as she could. He had done it with a shotgun. The letter he sent mom had been a suicide note. He didn't follow through with it that time and came over, begging her to give it back and not tell anyone - he said he 'was okay now.' Of course, she did tell Jacque and Tom, but I don't know what they did or if anything could have been done. He had been struggling with his demons for a long time, she told me. I found out, much later, she never really knew the details of the death of his first wife and their son.
I knew.
I went to my room and picked up the guitar that he probably would have given his son someday, in a perfect world, but there is no such thing.
I played, and I cried.
Awesome story. (Jeff Wallace)
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