Pop the Clutch

by Eric J. Guignard

  “Your mom told me you were smiling when she picked you up last night.” Katie looks up and sees her dad watching her from the rearview mirror. “I take it you had a good time.”

  It isn’t a question but Katie knows he expects an answer. “I guess so.”

  Gloria turns around on the seat so she can see Katie. “Our girl here was talking to a very tall young man when I pulled up.” When Katie gawks at her, her mom laughs. “Didn’t think I saw, did you?”

  “He’s just a friend,” she mumbles.

  Her mother makes a noise, and this time it’s Frank who laughs. “About time you had a boyfriend,” he says. “Just make sure you two keep it respectful.”

  “We just met last night,” Katie protests. “It’s not—”

  Still looking at her, Gloria’s raised hand cuts her off. “A beautiful, smart girl like you? It will be.”

  Katie blushes but doesn’t argue, because yes, she wants it to be . . . something. She’s relieved when her mom turns back to the front. She considers herself fairly smart, at least compared to a lot of the girls at school, but beautiful? Unfashionably long brown hair, green eyes from her mother, and plain clothes—she prefers white blouses and solid-colored skirts—that her mother makes at home. No, Katie would never believe ‘beautiful’ applied to her. Right now she’s just happy to be in the car with her parents. Just like she’d been last night, when her mom came to get her.

  Marty walks Katy out to just before the wall and stays with her as she waits for her mom. Laughter is everywhere as the teenagers spill from Carmichael. Most of the guys have Daddy’s car so they can drive home. There are a good number of girls like Katy who are waiting to be picked up. Most are still joking around and giggling, but a few, like Katy, stare anxiously at the oncoming line of cars, looking for Mom or Dad. When the old Fleetline stops at the curb, Katie has never been more grateful to see her mom driving it.

  Nothing is far away in Sierra Vista and her dad is pulling the dusty old car into the dirt parking lot within minutes. As her mother opens the door and climbs out, Katie hears her tell Frank, “I still can’t find my bracelet. I must have lost it.” Her dad says something in response but Katie can’t hear it over the sudden, guilty pulse in her temples. She’s grateful that neither parent turns to look at her as she follows them into the church.

  They find a bench where they can sit together and Katie watches people as they come in. The town isn’t big, twenty-five hundred people tops, but Sunday services are always crowded. Today, however, it’s standing room only. Her dad leans over and murmurs in Gloria ear, “I don’t see the colonel.”

  “I don’t see how you can pick anyone out of this crowd,” her mom replies. There’s an edge to her voice that makes Katie realize it’s not just herself who’s suffering in the heat.

  The service feels extra long to Katie, but she supposes it always does. By the time it’s over, she feels like a dish of ice cream forgotten on the table, melted and sticky. Since they’re so far in the back, her dad nudges her and they all slip out the door instead of waiting for everyone in the pews ahead to go first. Outside there’s a small breeze, barely enough to cool them off. It’s better than nothing because Katy knows her dad won’t leave until he’s shaken the preacher’s hand.

  It’s an eternity before the congregation thins enough so that her parents can reach Preacher Abernathy. Normally smiling, today the elderly man’s expression is solemn. “Good morning, sir,” her dad says. “Very nice sermon today.”

  “Thank you, Frank,” the preacher says. He nods toward Gloria and Katie. “Ladies.”

  Her dad tilts his head. “Is everything all right? You seem . . . ”

  “Troubled,” Abernathy fills in for him. His voice is grave. “I’m assuming you haven’t heard.”

  Frank and Gloria glance at each other. “Bad news?” her mom finally asks. Katie can hear the reluctance in her mother’s voice and she tenses. Oh, yeah, she thinks. Here it comes.

  “Mrs. Richardson was killed in an automobile accident last night,” the preacher tells her parents. “She was on her way to pick up her daughter after the prom and lost control of her car. She . . . ” He glances at Katie, then decides to continue. “She went through the windshield but the sheriff can’t determine exactly what she hit.”

  Her dad’s mouth drops open and her mother gasps. “The colonel’s wife? Melissa’s mother?”

  Abernathy nods. “Services will be on Wednesday morning at Fry Cemetery.”

  They talk for a few more minutes and no one notices Katie standing like a statue a few feet off to the side.

  ***

  THE RIDE HOME is mostly silent, with only Katie’s mom breaking the quiet now and then with, “I just can’t believe it.”

  Frank Morgan says nothing and Katie wonders what he’s thinking, if he’s wondering how he would’ve felt if the sheriff had knocked on their door with such horrible news. Katie says nothing, knowing there’s nothing she can do to lessen the shock. As they get out of the Chevy and head into the house, Katie sees her mom’s shoulders shaking; when her dad closes the door behind them and heads to the bedroom to get out of his Sunday clothes, Katie turns and wraps her mother in a hug. For a long second her mother doesn’t move, then she lowers her face to Katie’s shoulder and sobs quietly.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” Katie whispers, holding her tightly. “I’m so sorry.”

  A minute passes, no more, then Gloria raises her head. Her eyes are red, the light powder on her face streaked with wetness. “It’s so awful,” she says, wiping at her cheeks with the back of one hand. “I talked to her at the grocery a couple of days ago. We talked about planning a family picnic after school lets out. I can’t even think how heartbroken her daughter must feel.”

  Katie makes a comforting sound and steers her mom down the hall. “Go change your clothes,” Katie says in a soothing voice. “Then maybe you should take a nap.” Gloria raises her eyes, but Katie shakes her head. “Don’t worry about lunch. I’ll fix something for all of us.” Her mother sniffles, then lets Katie push her toward the closed door at the end of the hall. “You’ll feel better after a little sleep.”

  Her mom finally pulls the door open and disappears inside her bedroom, where Katie knows her dad will be waiting to hold her. She turns around and goes into the kitchen, and for a long while she stands in front of the familiar Formica table. Katie thinks about the family breakfast this morning and how different it is in here now, with no one in the kitchen but herself, how it’s so quiet and . . . empty. And she’s so glad the emptiness is temporary rather than permanent.

  Had Melissa been as close to her mother as Katy is to hers? Will she miss her? A silly thought—of course she will. But had she been friends with her mom, friends like Katie was with Gloria? Because there is no one in Katie’s life she’s closer to, no one else she can confide in and trust to not repeat something, even if it’s something Katie’s father shouldn’t know. And Katie finally realizes . . .

  Her mother has always been her best friend.

  And Katie will do anything, lie, steal, even sacrifice to The Prom Tree, to keep her safe.

  * * *

  YVONNE NAVARRO is the author of twenty-three published novels and a lot of short stories, articles, and a reference dictionary. Her most recent published book is Supernatural: The Usual Sacrifices (based in the Supernatural Universe). Her writing has won a bunch of awards and stuff. Lately she’s been really getting into painting and artwork. She lives way down in the southeastern corner of Arizona, about twenty miles from the Mexican border, is married to author Weston Ochse, and dotes on their rescued Great Danes, Ghoulie, The Grimmy Beast, and I Am Groot. They also have a talking, people-loving parakeet named BirdZilla. Instead of a To Do list, she has an I Want To Do list. It has about 4,274 projects on it and won’t stop growing.

  * * *

  I’M WITH THE BAND

  by Steve Perry

  He had some serious and weird shit going on inside his brain, too . . .
/>
  * * *

  “VITALIS,” JIM BOB SAID.

  “Bull fuckin’ shit. Brylcreem.” And since that was Dwayne sayin’ it, that shoulda been the final word, ’cause it was Dwayne’s band, he was the lead singer, he ran the show, but Jim Bob had drunk too much or smoked some reefer or something, and he didn’t let it go.

  “Naw, man, Vitalis gives you the dry look, and you don’t get grease all over your pillow or your girl’s hands and shit. Brylcreem makes you look like you dipped your head in old motor oil.”

  Maybe he was joking, trying to play it like the radio commercials, but it was a stupid fucking thing for Jim Bob to say, really stupid. It was, after all, “Dwayne Bogan and the Blades,” so his band, plus Dwayne was six inches taller than Jim Bob, thirty pounds heavier, and at age twenty, two years older—three over me—and meaner than a stepped-on cottonmouth moccasin. Dwayne did not like anybody to argue with him, and certainly no fucking way the double bass player!

  “So, you’re sayin’ I look like I use thirty-weight Bardahl on my hair?”

  You could have cut the rage in the room with a switchblade, but Jim Bob didn’t notice.

  Dwayne’s jacket creaked as he stepped off the shitty stage. Place was a no-class juke joint somewhere between Centreville and Liberty, stunk of stale beer and peanut shells, both of which spotted the floor, and also smelled a little bit of his leather, which was still pretty new. First thing Dwayne had done when he got some money was buy a Langlitz motorcycle jacket; it was top of the line, cost a shitload, and it fit him like skin. I think maybe some of the girls went with him just to watch him peel that jacket off.

  He swaggered to where Jim Bob was uncasing his stand-up bass.

  Jim Bob all of a sudden came to Jesus, and out of whatever trance he was in: “Oh, wait, hold on, I wasn’t talking about you, Dwayne! I was just, you know, sayin’—”

  Dwayne’s jeans, rolled up high-waters, unwashed for a few weeks, creaked like the stage as he thumped Jim Bob in the chest with the heel of his right hand, knocking him back a couple steps. Not really a hit, but more than a push.

  “Yeah, well, you don’t fuckin’ say anything about my hair!”

  Dwayne had the best DA of anybody in the band, that was pure fact: long, crow-black, and tight, and if it was slicked down with motor oil or Brylcreen or whale blubber, it didn’t keep the girls off him. He got more pussy than the rest of the band combined. He didn’t have a regular girl, so he always got first choice, always picked the hottest tomato, and didn’t matter if she was old enough to be legally-ripe yet.

  I was careful to turn my back while I ran the cable to the vocal mic, so Dwayne wouldn’t see me smile. He was just as likely to come back on the shitty stage and backhand me for the hell of it as not. Yeah, I’m with the band, but I’m just the road crew and back-up guitar player, if Dwayne hurts his hand fighting, or doesn’t feel like playing any particular night. Most nights, I just stand offstage and watch.

  He couldn’t see my smile, but he must have sensed it. “You got somethin’ to say there, Cecil?”

  I shook my head. “Not me, boss. I’m just stringing my cable here.”

  His voice rose. “My cable, you mean. You get my amp fixed right this time, too. And make sure the Tele is fucking tuned. That high E was flat last night, it threw me off. ”

  First off, he was full of shit, because I always had the axe tuned so it was dead-on; second off, he could have turned the tuning peg an eighth and fixed it if it had been flat, but he wasn’t a real musician. Oh, he could sing okay, mostly on-key, honkin’ Elvis or Buddy Holly just fine, but I can out-sing and play circles around him, that’s a fact, too.

  “Yessir.”

  Roy came in, carrying his sax case. “What a rathole.”

  Roy’s face had a fresh set of zits he tried to keep covered with Clearasil, but looked like a bunch of pale blotches on his red face, uglier than the zits. He just turned nineteen, which he celebrated by catching the clap after a gig in Jackson.

  “It’ll look better once we get the joint hoppin’,” Dwayne said. “Where the fuck is Bonehead?”

  We looked at each other. His kit was there and all set up, but no sign of our drummer. Not unusual, Bonehead lived in his own reality. He somehow always managed to show up before a gig, but sometimes it was like he had disappeared off the face of the Earth. We’d be at some juke like this one, middle of fucking nowhere, no place else Bonehead could even be, and we couldn’t find him.

  He had some serious and weird shit going on inside his brain, too. Talked religiously about seeing flying saucers, being able to control the weather, and how what we thought was reality was actually just some South American butterfly’s dream.

  Strange cat, Bonehead. Hell of a bad-ass drummer, though. He could lay down a beat and keep time like nobody’s business.

  “You do the set list?”

  I nodded at Dwayne. “Scotch-taped to the back of your Telecaster, like always.”

  “You write it big enough?”

  “Yessir.”

  Dwayne needed eyeglasses, he couldn’t see for shit up close, but it’d be a cold day in Hell before he would wear specs. First person who called him four-eyes would probably wind up in the hospital; Dwayne was quick to double his fists when he got pissed off, and he’d done some boxing before dropping out of high school. He could punch.

  “Run ’em down,” he said.

  I knew the list by heart, but I picked up the Fender Tele and pretended to read:

  “Little Darlin’, All Shook Up, Young Love, Bye-Bye Love.” I paused. “Party Doll, Jailhouse Rock. You Send Me—”

  “Wait. Stop. Didn’t I tell you we ain’t doin’ nigger shit? Scratch it off!”

  I nodded. Took my pencil from behind my ear and lined through Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me.” I’d tried sneaking it into the middle of the set a couple times before, maybe it would skate, but, no. Dwayne wouldn’t let us cover a lot of the Hit Parade, though some we did do was race record stuff that had been covered by white singers. Elvis doing Big Mama Thornton. Tab Hunter covering Sonny James. The white guys always sounded like shit compared to the Negroes, but I was careful not to say so to Dwayne. Or that the black guys had done it first. If he wanted to think Pat-Fucking-Boone had come up with Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti”? Let him.

  I ran through the rest of the set list as Dwayne lit up a Kool and inhaled the mentholated tobacco deep into his lungs. Kools were good for the voice, he said.

  “You got it wrong. Whole Lotta Shakin’ is ahead of That’ll Be the Day.” He blew smoke in my direction.

  “Yessir.”

  He did this every other place we played in, changed those two around. I thought maybe he did it just to fuck with me in particular.

  “And add Searchin’ to the end.”

  Before I could stop myself, I said, “You got the chords to that?”

  If looks coulda killed, I’d have gone down in flames and burned right through the plywood stage floor.

  “I got the fuckin’ chords.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Sorry.” He’d have to play it in C-major, only four chords, and no way could he do it in a horn key. Leiber and Stoller had written it in B-flat, which he couldn’t play. He didn’t have the words memorized, and even in C-major, I wouldn’t bet a plugged nickel against a silver dollar he could get through it without screwing up.

  Of course, by that late, most of the crowd would be sloshing-drunk, and probably only the band would notice, not including Dwayne, of course.

  I also didn’t mention that the Coasters, who sang the song, were Negroes. He didn’t know that. In fact, he didn’t know much about anything.

  Sometimes, Dwayne made a brick look smart.

  Bonehead just suddenly appeared, as if he’d come through the wall.

  “Where the fuck you been?”

  Bonehead smiled at Dwayne, eyes hidden behind his shades. “Valhalla, man.”

  Dwayne shook his head. “Crazier than a shithouse rat. All of y
ou.”

  ***

  HALFWAY THROUGH “WAKE UP Little Susie,” sixty, seventy people stomping along, it started to rain.

  That naturally happened a lot in the summer in Mississippi, frog-drowning downpours hitting all of a sudden . . .

  The low tin roof, not two feet above Dwayne’s head, rattled and shook, the sound of little wet hammers loud enough to halfway drown out the band. I hauled ass from behind the curtain to adjust Dwayne’s amp before he yelled at me. He was already dialed at eight, so I upped it to ten. Twenty watts, it wasn’t gonna get much louder. It was already fuzzing, but if the crowd of locals noticed or gave a crap, I couldn’t tell.

  The smell inside the bar was bad enough—sweat and spilled beer and peanut shells—but the hot and damp air got damper and made the smell worse, and now there was a little leak over the bandstand that dribbled just enough to make a tiny puddle on the wood stage, a couple feet to the left of where Dwayne mangled the Everly Brothers’ hit 45-record.

  I looked at Bonehead, who smiled at me.

  Crowded up against the stage were the local girls who thought Dwayne was the coolest, and I knew he was deciding which one he’d screw later.

  Halfway through the set, we took our fifteen. The rain slacked some, but it was still coming down in a steady beat.

  We stood at the bar, drinking our cans of Jax, and Dwayne sniggered and said, “I’mon punch that little blonde with the pony tail.”

  Bonehead and I looked at each other. Fifteen, maybe sixteen, that one; they didn’t check IDs much out here in the sticks, and Dwayne didn’t care. If they were big enough, they were old enough.

  Not like we hadn’t seen it before. Rock ’n’ Roll had its privileges. Drummer got some, if he wanted; the sax guy, even the bass player. Not so much the crew. Not that I was bad-looking, but I wasn’t on the stage, except for the nights when Dwayne was too drunk, hurt, or lazy to play, and even then, I had to be careful not to show him up. He was fixin’ to fire me half the time, usually after I’d covered for him, and I knew a small part of him resented what I could do. So gettin’ laid was at the bottom of my list of worries, though I wouldn’t have minded moving it up.