The Day The Music Died sm-1

by Ed Gorman

  We went silent again. I heard cars passing out on the street. A couple of times, light trucks went by and the windows vibrated. The cats came out and looked us over and apparently didn’t find us particularly exciting. They went back into the bedroom.

  She said, “He cried.”

  “Tonight, you mean?”

  “Yes. After I got done working, he was waiting for me out in back. He was in his car. He told me to get in. Usually, when I make him mad, he kind of shouts at me. But tonight he was quiet. Real quiet. He kind of scared me a little bit, in fact. The way he just kept looking at me. So I got in the car. I was afraid not to. And then he took me for a ride. I don’t think he knew where he was going. He was just driving, you know how you just drive around sometimes. And then when we were out in the park and driving by the duck pond, he started crying. Just sobbing. I didn’t know what to do.”

  She frowned. “Then we got out of the car and walked on the hill above the swimming pool. It looks real strange in winter, like ancient ruins or something. Then he finally talked. He told me how much he loved me and that he knew I loved you and knew that you loved Pamela and that he didn’t know what to do about it. And then he said that even if I didn’t love him now, he was sure I’d love him someday, and that we should still go through with the marriage and pick out a house and plan to have a kid and everything.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve succeeded in doing the impossible.”

  “What?”

  “He’s one of the most pompous, arrogant bastards in the valley and now you’ve got me feeling sorry for him. His dad beats him, you and I damned near crushed him and now he’s willing to marry you even if you don’t love him.”

  “I feel terrible.”

  “So do I.”

  “Maybe I love him, McCain, and don’t even realize it.”

  “Maybe.”

  “God, McCain, what should I do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I shouldn’t be here.”

  “No, you shouldn’t.”

  “I feel like a whore.”

  “Oh, c’mon.”

  “I don’t even know if I love you anymore, McCain.”

  “It’d be easier if you didn’t.”

  “Easier for who?”

  I paused. “For all three of us. You and him and me.”

  “I guess you’re right.” Then, “I really do feel like a whore, McCain.”

  I thought of Ruthie saying that. Ruthie and Mary were about as far from being whores as you could get.

  And yet they didn’t seem to believe that.

  The phone rang. In the shadows, the rings were loud, ominous. I didn’t get it until the fourth ring. The phone was on the cigarette-scarred coffee table along with the new issues of Playboy and Manhunt.

  A voice said, “He wants to talk to you, Mr. McCain.” No amenities. Lurlene Greene.

  “Where is he?”

  “Here. Home.”

  “Why didn’t Darin call me himself?”

  “I had to talk him into it.”

  “I see.”

  “He’s waiting for you.”

  “He sober?”

  Mary was on her feet, pushing her arms into her coat. She gave me a wan little wave and went to the back door. I waved her off, pointing to the chair, indicating she should sit down. I didn’t want her to leave in the mood she was in. I felt a surge of affection for her. I wanted to hold her, smell her hair, feel her mouth on mine. Sometimes, I felt just as confused as she did.

  “Are you coming out?” Lurlene asked.

  Mary left quietly. I went back to the phone conversation.

  “As soon as I can. Half an hour, say.”

  “I don’t know how long I can hold him, Mr. McCain. You best hurry.” She hung up.

  Twenty-three

  I was halfway down the stairs before I realized there was a car in the alley. I recognized the new Buick. It belonged to Wes, the pharmacist, Mary’s Wes. The engine was running, the parking lights were on. As I reached the bottom of the stairs, I could see two people sitting in the front seat, Wes and Mary.

  I felt sick. I wasn’t afraid of him, but I was embarrassed for him. I’d followed Pamela all kinds of unlikely places over the years. Sometimes, when I needed to see her, it was like a fever coming over me. I wasn’t quite aware of what I was doing. I was all raw need. And then I’d see her and it would be all right. Just seeing her was enough.

  There’s a kind of symmetry to love affairs ending in cars. That’s where most of them start and have since the days of the Model-T. You start out necking and then it gets more serious and then pretty soon you’re going all the way. You read a lot of magazine articles about how men are always walking out on women, but I know an awful lot of men who’ve been walked out on, too. Whenever I hear one sex or the other trying to stake a claim on virtue, I generally leave the room.

  They sat there in the alley light, the Buick handsome and imposing, sleek as all hell. You could faintly hear words spoken. Gentle words. And those hurt more than the harsh ones. A lot of times, you don’t mean the harsh ones. You just kind of blurt them out unthinkingly. But the gentle ones, man, those are the killers: the considered words; the I-don’t-want-to-hurt-your-feelings words; the final words.

  Then the driver’s door opened and Wes awkwardly got out of the car and shouted over the rooftop. “C’mon, you son of a bitch, let’s get this over with!”

  I don’t know which surprised me more, that he wanted to fight or that he was sloppy drunk.

  He came around the back of the car, slipping and sliding in stumbling drunken anger, throwing his fists up like old John L. Sullivan in the days of bare-knuckle fighting.

  “You son of a bitch!” he said.

  Mary burst out of the passenger door.

  “Wes! Wes! Stop it! Stop it!”

  “You son of a bitch!” he yelled at me again.

  I’d have to teach this boy some new swear words.

  I stood next to the garbage cans and watched Mary try to stop him from coming at me. At first, she seemed to do a pretty good job. He put his gloved fists down, anyway. He looked lost and frantic, the way drunks get when the booze is turning ugly in them.

  Then he went around her. She grabbed for him but slipped and went down on one knee on the ice.

  And then he was there in front of me. His fists came back up and he started swinging. He caught me a square one right on the temple, surprising me. There was some ego involved, too. He was a stuffy man and stuffy men shouldn’t be able to throw punches like that.

  Mary was screaming at him again and then it was all frenzy because he leaped on me and started choking me.

  You know how it gets in fights-all kinds of things going on at the same time, little explosions of anger and fear and confusion, the neighborhood dogs suddenly starting to yowl, sweat and blood and snot covering my face. That was when I kicked him in the balls. I know that’s something that heroes never do, take those dirty little shortcuts that frequently mean victory, but he was too big and I was not exactly a great fighter. I got him good, real good. He screamed and then he started to flail backward. Mary grabbed him to keep him from falling and then he lunged to the right of her and started throwing up. You never see this in movies, the vomiting, but a lot of parking lot puking goes on after two drunks have at each other.

  Then he went facedown in the snow and Mary screamed and sank down beside him and started rolling him over so she could see his face. When she got him on his back, he started crying and it was so miserable, that sound-^th tears went all the way back to his childhood-and I felt like shit for so many reasons all I could do was walk away, around the side of the house to my car and drive away and head out for Darin Greene’s place.

  Twenty-four

  In the snow and moonlight, the trailer court looked snug and cozy. Window lights seemed inviting and the silver flash of Tv screens promised fun and excitement. Friday nights like this, 77 Sunset Strip was
on, one of those entertainingly improbable private-eye shows where the hero drives a new T-bird and even nuns throw themselves at him.

  Passing the trailers leading to Darin Greene’s, I heard babies cry, Fats Domino sing, a couple argue and a car being jump-started.

  When I pulled up to Greene’s trailer, I saw Lurlene Greene stashing two small children into Darin’s battered Olds convertible. I started to pull into a parking spot but Darin slammed out of the trailer and waved me away.

  “You don’t have no business here, man,” he said. “Now get your ass out of here.”

  “Your wife asked me to come out.”

  “I make the rules around here.”

  I glanced over at Lurlene. She was just opening the driver’s door of the Olds. Our eyes met briefly but then she looked away and climbed inside. The Olds took a couple tries to start then was rumbling like a prairie train in the middle of the night. Darin slapped the trunk of the car the way a man would slap a horse’s rump. Lurlene gave the big car some gas, backed out of her parking spot and drove off down the narrow lane between the trailers.

  Darin watched her go. He wore a T-shirt and dark pants and no shoes. He smelled sourly of sweat and whiskey.

  I said, “Lurlene said you wanted to talk to me.”

  “Lurlene wanted me to talk to you and that’s a whole ‘nother thing, man.”

  “Why did you and Kenny Whitney have a falling out about a year ago?”

  “Who says we had a falling out?”

  “You did, for one.” He obviously didn’t remember much of our earlier conversation. “And about a hundred people who saw you get into a fight down at Paddy’s Tap one night. You pulled a knife on him. And then you had another fight about a week later and broke out a window over at Russert’s bar throwing a beer glass at him.”

  “We was just drunk is all.” Then he waved me off. “I had enough of this bullshit, man. I ain’t got no shoes on. I’m goin’ in.

  An’ you get the hell out of here and leave my wife alone. You hear? You leave her alone, McCain.”

  I hit him with the only weapon I had. And, who knew, maybe it wasn’t a weapon at all. Maybe my guess was totally wrong. “You ever find that gun of yours?”

  He tensed up. No doubt about it. “What gun, man?”

  “Your thirty-two.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

  “Yesterday. When they were throwing you out of Paddy’s. I drove your car, remember?”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “You said you couldn’t find your gun.”

  “Not me, man. I never had no gun to lose.” He’d forgotten that, too.

  “I think I know where it is.”

  He looked startled. “What you talkin’ about?”

  “Cliffie Sykes has got it. It’s the gun he found at Kenny Whitney’s. It’s the gun that was used to kill Susan.”

  He started walking. I don’t know where he was going, but he seemed frantic to get there. He must have walked, barefooted in the icy night, four, five hundred feet down that narrow asphalt strip of road. And then he stopped and walked back, the Platters loud about two trailers down.

  “I didn’t kill her, man. I swear I didn’t. A colored man like me, Sykes’d hang my ass for sure if he ever found out that was my gun.”

  Actually, Sykes probably wouldn’t hang his ass. He was having too good a time sullying the familial pride of the Whitneys, but I didn’t want Greene to know that.

  “How’d the gun get out at Whitney’s?”

  He looked sullen and then he looked sad.

  “I gave it to Susan. About a year ago or so.”

  “Why?”

  Another sullen look. “This ain’t any of your business.”

  “Why’d you give her the gun, Darin?”

  After a time, he said, “Because she was afraid.”

  “Of whom?”

  “My feet’re freezin’, man.”

  He started doing a little dance step to impress me with how cold his feet were.

  “You can sit in the car.”

  “Up yours.”

  “Who was she afraid of?”

  He was silent for a time. “Kenny.”

  “What happened between you and Kenny?”

  An old Plymouth pickup truck came down the narrow lane. The man inside waved at Darin and Darin waved back. Inside, his phone started ringing.

  “I better get that,” he said.

  And then he was gone and I knew he’d answered all the questions he was going to. I listened to him slam the door and then bolt it from the inside. He must have had three different kinds of bolts.

  I backed out of the parking space. I thought maybe I could find Lurlene, but then I decided she had too much of a head start. Besides, I was worrying about Ruthie again. I hadn’t liked the way we’d left it, that a couple of her friends would help her take care of things. That was the trouble with the abortion laws, a subject I’d argued about in law school. The alternative to legal abortion was illegal abortion and that meant a lot of innocent girls dying every year because well-intentioned friends had decided to help them out.

  When you came into town from the northeast, as I did, it looked a lot bigger, a monument to Mammon out here on the prairies. We even had a Howard Johnson’s motel and restaurant and that was the new place for the more social teenagers to hang out. Not the motel-there was only one motel in town that’d let teenagers shack up, a trucking place out on the highway -the restaurant. It was kind of funny seeing all these hot rods in the Howard Johnson parking lot, chopped and channeled louvered Merc’s and street-rods and Bob Mallory’s beautiful ‘ci Ford Phaeton, all those Turbo heads and Johannsen ignitions and extra pots to soup everything up.

  I drove up to the edge of the parking lot where there was a pay phone. I called my folks and tried to sound chatty. Then I said, calmly as I could, “I told Ruthie I’d help her on this history test she’s got next week.”

  “Oh?” Mom said. “That’s strange. I didn’t know you helped her with her tests.”

  I laughed. “You mean, she’s the smart one so why would she want help from me?”

  “Well-” Mom said. And laughed, too.

  “Is she around, Mom?”

  “No. She called and said she was staying at Gloria Spellman’s tonight. Said they’d both be up studying all night.”

  It wasn’t true. I wondered where Ruthie really was tonight. I got scared. “Well, tell her I’ll call her in the morning.”

  “I’ll tell her, honey.”

  “And say hi to Dad.”

  “I will. Love you, honey.”

  “Love you, too, Mom.”

  I drove downtown. The girl-cruise was in full flower. Cars of every description moved slowly along Central Avenue where the theaters and pizza shops and hamburger joints were located-where the girls were located. Up and down, down and up, the cars drove, most of the boys resorting to grins and gawks and graceless waves. That was how the uncool boys handled it, the ones in Dad’s car or driving the 1948 Kaiser or the

  Henry or an old dog of a Dodge that was rusting into death even while you watched. The kids fit their cars. In my day, I’d maneuvered a

  Studebaker with bad steering problems up and down Central Avenue. I had science fiction magazines and Gold Medal paperbacks stacked in the backseat and the only radio station I could get played Lawrence Welk every third song.

  I’d suffered from pimples, wet dreams, athlete’s foot and a secret terror that I’d never really be a man. Women only thought you were cool if you thought you were cool-and I knew I wasn’t cool.

  Things didn’t look as if they’d changed much.

  Three exquisite young blondes were flirting with some guy in a leather jacket sitting inside a cherry-red street rod. There was only room for two inside. He was probably deciding which of the lucky girls he was going to let inside. He was doing this while all the losers (those carrying on in my tradition) drove their clunk-mobiles up and down the street.


  I found another outdoor phone. But realized I didn’t have the change for a long-. tance call.

  I looked up and down the street. The nearest place where I could get change was the Rexall that Wes owned. At first I ruled it out but then decided he wouldn’t be there. He’d be home sleeping it off. Or at Mary’s letting her help him sober up.

  Jim the handyman was the only customer in the pharmacy when I walked up to the counter. A teenaged girl was working tonight. She handed Jim’s package over and said, “Here you go, Jim. Your animals sure are lucky, the way you take care of them.” She smiled when she said it.

  “Animals are just like humans to me,” he said.

  “They keep me company since my wife died.”

  “You must have quite a few,” the girl smiled.

  When Jim saw me, he said, “Hey, hi, McCain. Tell your folks I’ll have that roofing estimate for them by Tuesday.”

  I nodded. “You’ll wait ‘til better weather to put it on, won’t you?”

  He laughed. “I sure will.”

  I asked the girl for change for a five and she gave it to me. Just as I was turning to leave, I heard noise from the back of the store, boxes tumbling down in a crash. Then a drunken man’s voice said, “You think I want you anymore after you’ve treated me this way? You get the hell away from me and you stay away from me. You understand that? You stay away from me.”

  The girl and I stared back there for a long moment.

  Then Mary Travers appeared, walking quickly out from between the heavy green curtains that concealed the stockroom.

  She walked very quickly to the front of the store.

  She kept her eyes straight ahead, mortified. She was out the front door in moments.

  I went out after her. She was already halfway down the block. I caught up with her, sliding on an icy patch the last few steps. Ever the hot dog, I am. I grabbed her by the sleeve as she kept on walking.

  We didn’t say anything. Just looked at each other. And then I fell into step, walking.

  The night was cold enough to numb your nose. We walked by the town square. It looked cold and lonely. The bandstand had smashed snowballs frozen to its sides. The guy on the Civil War memorial had a real bad case of snow dandruff on his shoulders.