You Know They Got a Hell of a Band Read online

  Clark gave it his best, but wasn't quite able to stop. The Princess slid into The Magic Bus at ten or fifteen miles an hour, her wheels locked and her tires smoking fiercely. There was a hollow bang as the Mercedes hit the tie-dyed bus amidships. Mary was thrown forward against her safety harness again. The bus rocked on its springs a little, but that was all.

  "Back up and go around!" she screamed at Clark, but she was nearly overwhelmed by a suffocating intuition that it was all over. The Princess's engine sounded choppy, and Mary could see steam escaping from around the front of her crumpled hood; it looked like the breath of a wounded dragon. When Clark dropped the

  transmission lever down into reverse, the car backfired twice, shuddered like an old wet dog, and stalled.

  Behind them, they could hear an approaching siren. She wondered who the town constable would turn out to be. Not John Lennon, whose life's motto had been Question Authority, and not the Lizard King, who was clearly one of the town's pool-shooting bad boys. Who? And did it really matter? Maybe, she thought, it'll turn out to be Jimi Hendrix. That sounded crazy, but she knew her rock and roll, probably better than Clark, and she remembered reading somewhere that Hendrix had been a jump-jockey in the 101st Airborne. And didn't they say that ex-service people often made the best law-enforcement officials?

  You're going crazy, she told herself, then nodded. Sure she was. In a way it was a relief. "What now?" she asked Clark dully.

  He opened his door, having to put his shoulder into it because it had crimped a little in the frame. "We run," he said.

  "What's the point?"

  "You saw them; do you want to be them?"

  That rekindled some of her fear. She released the clasp of her seatbelt and opened her own door. Clark came around the Princess and took her hand. As they turned back toward The Magic Bus, his grip tightened painfully as he saw who was stepping off -- a tall man in an open-throated white shirt, dark dungarees, and wrap-around sunglasses. His blue-black hair was combed back from his temples in a lush and impeccable duck's ass 'do. There was no mistaking those impossible, almost hallucinatory good looks; not even sunglasses could hide them. The full lips parted in a small, sly smile.

  A blue-and-white police cruiser with rock and roll heaven p.o. written on the doors came around the curve and screeched to a stop inches from the Princess's back bumper. The man behind the wheel was black, but he wasn't Jimi Hendrix after all. Mary couldn't be sure, but she thought the local law was Otis Redding.

  The man in the shades and black jeans was now standing directly in front of them, his thumbs hooked into his belt-loops, his pale hands dangling like dead spiders. "How y'all t'day?" There was no mistaking that slow, slightly sardonic Memphis drawl, either. "Want to welcome you both to town. Hope you can stay with us for awhile. Town ain't much to look at, but we're neighborly, and we take care of our own." He stuck out a hand on which three absurdly large rings glittered. "I'm the mayor round these parts. Name's Elvis Presley."

  Dusk, of a summer night.

  As they walked onto the town common, Mary was again reminded of the concerts she had attended in Elmira as a child, and she felt a pang of nostalgia and sorrow penetrate the cocoon of shock which her mind and emotions had wrapped around her. So similar... but so different, too. There were no children waving sparklers; the only kids present were a dozen or so huddled together as far from the bandshell as they could get, their pale faces strained and watchful. The kids she and Clark had seen in the grammar-school play-yard when they made their abortive run for the hills were among them.

  And it was no quaint brass band that was going to play in fifteen minutes or half an hour, either -- spread across the band-shell (which looked almost as big as the Hollywood Bowl to Mary's eyes) were the implements and accessories of what had to be the world's biggest -- and loudest, judging from the amps -- rock-and-roll band, an apocalyptic bebop combination that would, at full throttle, probably be loud enough to shatter window-glass five miles away. She counted a dozen guitars on stands and stopped counting. There were four full drum-sets... bongos... congas... a rhythm section... circular stage pop-ups where the backup singers would stand... a steel grove of mikes.

  The common itself was filled with folding chairs -- Mary estimated somewhere between seven hundred and a thousand -- but she thought there were no more than fifty spectators actually present, and probably less. She saw the mechanic, now dressed in clean jeans and a Perma-Pressed shirt; the pale, once-pretty woman sitting next to him was probably his wife. The nurse was sitting all by herself in the middle of a long empty row. Her face was turned upward and she was watching the first few glimmering stars come out. Mary looked away from this one; she felt if she looked at that sad, longing face too deeply, her heart would break.

  Of the town's more famous residents there was currently no sign. Of course not; their day-jobs were behind them now and they would all be backstage, duding up and checking their cues. Getting ready for tonight's rilly big shew.

  Clark paused about a quarter of the way down the grassy central aisle. A puff of evening breeze tousled his hair, and Mary thought it looked as dry as straw. There were lines carved into Clark's forehead and around his mouth that she had never seen before. He looked as if he had lost thirty pounds since lunch in Oakridge. The Testosterone Kid was nowhere in evidence, and Mary had an idea he might be gone for good. She found she didn't care much, one way or the other.

  And by the way, sugarpie-honeybunch, how do you think you look?

  "Where do you want to sit?" Clark asked. His voice was thin and uninterested -- the voice of a man who still believes he might be dreaming.

  Mary spotted the waitress with the coldsore. She was on the aisle about four rows down, now dressed in a light-gray blouse and cotton skirt. She had thrown a sweater over her shoulders. "There," Mary said, "beside her." Clark led her in that direction without question or objection.

  The waitress looked around at Mary and Clark, and Mary saw that her eyes had at least settled down tonight, which was something of a relief. A moment later she realized why: the girl was cataclysmically stoned. Mary looked down, not wanting to meet that dusty stare any longer, and when she did, she saw that the waitress's left hand was wrapped in a bulky white bandage. Mary realized with horror that at least one finger and perhaps two were gone from the girl's hand.

  "Hi," the girl said. "I'm Sissy Thomas."

  "Hello, Sissy. I'm Mary Willmgham. This is my husband, Clark."

  "Pleased to meet you," the waitress said.

  "Your hand..." Mary trailed off, not sure how to go on.

  "Frankie did it." Sissy spoke with the deep indifference of one who is riding the pink horse down Dream Street. "Frankie Lymon. Everyone says he was the sweetest guy you'd ever want to meet when he was alive and he only turned mean when he came here. He was one of the first ones... the pioneers, I guess you'd say. I don't know about that. If he was sweet before, I mean. I only know he's meaner than cat-dirt now. I don't care. I only wish you'd gotten away, and I'd do it again. Besides, Crystal takes care of me."

  Sissy nodded toward the nurse, who had stopped looking at the stars and was now looking at them.

  "Crystal takes real good care. She'll fix you up, if you want -- you don't need to lose no fingers to want to get stoned in this town."

  3 "My wife and I don't use drugs," Clark said, sounding , pompous.

  Sissy regarded him without speaking for a few moments. Then "she said, "You will."

  "When does the show start?" Mary could feel the cocoon of shock starting to dissolve, and she didn't much care for the feeling.

  "Soon."

  "How long do they go on?"

  Sissy didn't answer for nearly a minute, and Mary was getting ready to restate the question, thinking the girl either hadn't heard or hadn't understood, when she said: "A long time. I mean, the show will be over by midnight, they always are, it's a town ordinance, but still... they go on a long time. Because time is different here. It might be... oh, I dunno
... I think when the guys really get cooking, they sometimes go on for a year or more."

  A cold gray frost began creeping up Mary's arms and back. She tried to imagine having to sit through a year-long rock show and couldn't do it. This is a dream and you'll wake up, she told herself, but that thought, persuasive enough as they stood listening to Elvis Presley in the sunlight by The Magic Bus, was now losing a lot of its force and believability.

  "Drivin out this road here wouldn't do you no good no how," Elvis had told them. "It don't go no place but Umpqua Swamp. No roads in there, just a lot of polk salad. And quicksand." He had paused then, the lenses of his shades glittering like dark furnaces in the late-afternoon sun. "And other things."

  "Bears," the policeman who might be Otis Redding had volunteered from behind them.

  "Bears, yep," Elvis agreed, and then his lips had curled up in the too-knowing smile Mary remembered so well from TV and the movies. "And other things."

  Mary had begun: "If we stay for the show..."

  Elvis nodded emphatically. "The show! Oh yeah, you gotta stay for the show! We really rock. You just see if we don't."

  "Ain't nothin’ but a stone fact," the policeman had added.

  "If we stay for the show... can we go when it's over?"

  Elvis and the cop had exchanged a glance that had looked serious but felt like a smile. "Well, you know, ma'am," the erstwhile King of Rock and Roll said at last, "we're real far out in the boonies here, and attractin’ an audience is kinda slow work... although once they hear us, everybody stays around for more... and we was kinda hopin’ you'd stick around yourselves for awhile. See a few shows and kind of enjoy our hospitality." He had pushed his sunglasses up on his forehead then, for a moment revealing wrinkled, empty eyesockets. Then they were Elvis's dark-blue eyes again, regarding them with somber interest.

  "I think," he had said, "you might even decide you want to settle down."

  There were more stars in the sky now; it was almost full dark. Over the stage, orange spots were coming on, soft as night-blooming flowers, illuminating the mike-stands one by one.

  "They gave us jobs," Clark said dully. "He gave us jobs. The mayor. The one who looks like Elvis Presley."

  "He is Elvis," Sissy Thomas said, but Clark just went on staring at the stage. He was not prepared to even think this yet, let alone hear it.

  "Mary is supposed to go to work in the Be-Bop Beauty Bar tomorrow," he went on. "She has an English degree and a teacher's certificate, but she's supposed to spend the next God-knows-how-long as a shampoo girl. Then he looked at me and he says, 'Whuh boi-chew, sir? Whuh-c/jore speciality?' " Clark spoke in a vicious imitation of the mayor's Memphis drawl, and at last a genuine expression began to show in the waitress's stoned eyes. Mary thought it was fear.

  "You hadn't ought to make fun," she said. "Makin fun can get you in trouble around here... and you don't want to get in trouble." She slowly raised her bandage-wrapped hand. Clark stared at it, wet lips quivering, until she lowered it into her lap again, and when he spoke again, it was in a lower voice.

  "I told him I was a computer software expert, and he said there weren't any computers in town... although they 'sho would admiah to git a Ticketron outlet or two.' Then the other guy laughed and said there was a stockboy's job open down at the superette, and -- "

  A bright white spotlight speared the forestage. A short man in a sportcoat so wild it made Buddy Holly's look tame strode into its beam, his hands raised as if to stifle a huge comber of applause.

  "Who's that?" Mary asked Sissy.

  "Some oldtime disc jockey who used to run a lot of these shows. His name is Alan Tweed or Alan Breed or something like that. We hardly ever see him except here. I think he drinks. He sleeps all day -- that I do know."

  And as soon as the name was out of the girl's mouth, the cocoon which had sheltered Mary disappeared and the last of her disbelief melted away. She and Clark had stumbled into Rock and Roll Heaven, but it was actually Rock and Roll Hell. This had not happened because they were evil people; it had not happened because the old gods were punishing them; it had happened because they had gotten lost in the woods, that was all, and getting lost in the woods was a thing that could happen to anybody.

  "Got a great show for ya tonight!" the emcee was shouting enthusiastically into his mike. "We got the Big Bopper... Freddie Mercury, just in from London-Town... Jim Croce... my main man Johnny Ace..."

  Mary leaned toward the girl. "How long have you been here, Sissy?"

  "I don't know. It's easy to lose track of time. Six years at least. Or maybe it's eight. Or nine."

  "... Keith Moon of The Who... Brian Jones of the Stones... that cute li'l Florence Bollard of the Supremes... Mary Wells..."

  Articulating her worst fear, Mary asked: "How old were you when you came?"

  "Cass Elliot... Janis Joplin..."

  "Twenty-three."

  “King Curtis... Johnny Bumette..."

  "And how old are you now?"

  "Slim Harpo... Bob 'Bear' Hite... Stevie Ray Vaughan..."

  "Twenty-three," Sissy told her, and on stage Alan Freed went on screaming names at the almost empty town common as the stars came out, first a hundred stars, then a thousand, then too many to count, stars that had come out of the blue and now glittered everywhere in the black; he tolled the names of the drug o.d.'s, the alcohol o.d.'s, the plane crash victims and the shooting victims, the ones who had been found in alleys and the ones who had been found in swimming pools and the ones who had been found in roadside ditches with steering columns poking out of their chests and most of their heads torn off their shoulders; he chanted the names of the young ones and the old ones, but mostly they were the young ones, and as he spoke the names of Ronnie Van Zant and Steve Gaines, she heard the words of one of their songs tolling in her mind, the one that went Oooh, that smell, can't you smell that smell, and yes, you bet, she certainly could smell that smell; even out here, in the clear Oregon air, she could smell it, and when she took Clark's hand it was like taking the hand of a corpse.

  "Awwwwwwlllll riiiiiyyyyyght!" Alan Freed was screaming. Behind him, in the darkness, scores of shadows were trooping onto the stage, lit upon their way by roadies with Penlites. "Are you ready to paaaarty?"

  No answer from the scattered spectators on the common, but Freed was waving his hands and laughing as if some vast audience were going crazy with assent. There was just enough light left in the sky for Mary to see the old man reach up and turn off his hearing aid.

  "Are you ready to booooogie?"

  This time he was answered -- by a demonic shriek of saxophones from the shadows behind him.

  "Then let's go... because rock and roll will never die!"

  As the show-lights came up and the band swung into the first song of that night's long, long concert -- "I'll Be Doggone," with Marvin Gaye doing the vocal -- Mary thought: That's what I'm afraid of. That's exactly what I'm afraid of.