You Know They Got a Hell of a Band(16)
"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 bo\i-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.