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He opened his eyes and saw one swinging in front of his nose, held by the woman standing on the stairs. She said, "Excuse me, Mr. Brown, could you use this? I found it in a piano nine years ago." That Sunday, Brown told the story in church. The next week, at the Pflugerville H-E-B, a couple from his church told him they wanted to give him their old Chrysler New Yorker, replacing his Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme with its odometer reading of 400,000. Brown, weary of plugging the engine's water leaks with putty and popsicle sticks, was overwhelmed. Brown's eyes sparkle with laughter as he tells the story. He glances at the piano he's temporarily forgotten and chuckles at his verbosity. "Too bad I have nothing to say!" Suddenly, he pivots back to the keyboard. Smiling, he launches into Chopin's "Waltz in C-sharp Minor" and the brothel story. Unfamiliar territory It's Halloween a few years back, and Brown gets a call from a young woman needing a piano tuned. He drives to the residential address in an exclusive Austin neighborhood. An attractive woman answers the door, and Brown steps into a magnificent three-story house, admiring the sunken living room, jukebox and big-screen TV. And sign-in desk. His eyes find the $70,000 Steinway grand piano on a stage with microphones and mirrors. The piano is flat, and Brown starts raising the pitch. Then the excitement starts. A man wearing camouflage shorts is angrily yelling on the telephone in a nearby room. Brown decides to ignore the conversation. Then a door flies open from a different room and in stomps a young woman, wearing lots of makeup and dressed in a way that even the naive Brown understands. The man tells the woman she is fired, and she storms upstairs to the third floor to get her things. The man follows her, locking himself in her room, and the house becomes a cacophony of loud female voices discussing whether to call the police. Meanwhile, Brown stands quietly at the piano, trying to will all 5 feet 6 inches of his frame invisible. Ding, ding, plink, plink. He's halfway through tuning the Steinway, and leaving now would be like leaving a limousine up on blocks. His heart thumping, he finishes and starts inching toward the door, deciding he won't ask to be paid. Besides, who would you ask? A woman intercepts him and asks if he can mail them the bill. But that's not how he does business. So he says no. Will he take a credit card? No. Cash or check only. So the women huddle in the middle of the living room, and one of them emerges. She writes Brown a personal check for $65 and says she'll be reimbursed. Brown finally escapes, and the punch line comes to the man who preaches chastity to his sons before marriage: "I, Paul Brown, went to the brothel and the girls paid me." The story told, Brown calls it a day at the church and carries his tools to the New Yorker. It's late afternoon, and he's anxious to get home, hoping to beat the rush-hour traffic on MoPac. The car is running fairly well; he recently repaired the drive shaft and replaced a bad bearing after tiring of an annoying "wah, wah" sound. He crawls behind the wheel, praying for a safe journey. He starts the engine, listening intently. He listens all the way home . . . to the hum of his tires, to the wind whistling through the back window, to the stories in his heart. -END- |
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“In the Key of Brown” continued pg. 4 |
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