Miss Route 66

by Michael Lund

  To avoid looking like I was talking to Liz, I turned to the side and there saw Mr. Pierce again, his face still red. And now I could tell where his gaze was directed: at Blind Bill Martin.

  All that stuff I told you earlier about how well they worked together? Well, I guess it was an act, at least on Mr. Pierce's side. He hated the attention Blind Bill got, from the crowd, but also, of course, from the girls. And even as the pageant progressed, he was hoping for some way to strike at a rival.

  Many weeks later I heard Blind Bill on the radio, singing his favorite tunes. I wrote down the words to that song he'd told me about, and they've stayed in my mind ever since. I didn't really believe they applied to Blind Bill himself, of course. I saw them as Mr. Pierce's theme song:

  My Mama loved her little boy,

  She watched him grow with joy.

  But then a man, I rambled and I roamed.

  I played too hard, did things I shouldn't have done.

  My Mama cried and sorrowed once I'd gone.

  Can't see my Mama now, you know,

  Can't see my Mama now.

  She's up in heaven, an angel pure;

  I'm goin' to hell for sure.

  My Mama came to see her son,

  She visited him in prison.

  I shot a man, a drunken brawl'd begun.

  He stole my girl, but I shouldn't have used a gun.

  My Mamma cried and sorrowed once she'd gone.

  Can't see my Mama now, you know,

  Can't see my Mama now.

  She's up in heaven, an angel pure;

  I'm going to hell for sure.

  4

  It amuses me to think of the variety of talents we potential Misses Route 66 demonstrated that evening long ago: baton twirling, flute playing, bowling pin juggling, archery, tumbling (which was what we called gymnastics then), singing, doing arithmetic in your head, and other skills I can't even recall. What an odd collection of talents!

  Still, as I remember that night, I feel that our disparate abilities merged into a single entity, a collection of young aspirations that complemented rather than clashed with each other. I suppose it's too grand to say that we represented the variety of America's female youth, the nation's girlhood in sum. But, now that I think about it again, maybe not.

  In the coming years of the tumultuous 1960s and the troubled early 70s, many of us discovered and used talents we hadn't known we possessed. The women's movement picked up energy from the civil rights campaigns of that era, and an important force in our nation's history gained new energy. It didn't come from outside these same girls who wanted to be beauty queens, but from inside, from powerful desires that formerly had been directed into the odd channels of, say, cheerleading or beauty contests.

  So, as I pull up from memory images of Janet Paramore tossing balsa wood bowling pins and Martha Walton drawing her bow at a straw-stuffed bull's eye and Cathy Nunn calculating the number of seats in the auditorium in her head, I think not of trivial accomplishment or misspent energy, but of raw potential waiting for its moment, waiting for a future that did occur.

  I was in the middle of the order for the talent phase, as we went roughly from simple to complex in terms of equipment and space required: dramatic reading, flute, and piano preceded archery, tumbling, and baton twirling. All I needed was my music stand set in place in the middle of the stage.

  I'd brought a collapsible metal stand from home, even though there were others available at the college. I just felt I'd be more comfortable with the same stand I'd used since I began playing.

  My stand's three legs--each about eighteen inches long--unfolded at the bottom of the main stem to form a tripod base. A long, thin tube rose from that base to the structure that held the music. It opened at the top like a fan, perhaps eighteen inches wide and a foot high.

  "Let me help you with that," said a low voice as I tested it behind the stage. Mr. Pierce was standing at my side, his mouth close to my ear.

  "Oh!" I'm afraid I jumped. "Oh, this isn't hard. I do it all the time by myself."

  Nevertheless, he pulled the stand from me. Putting both hands on the middle stem, he pushed it down on the floor, spreading the legs and, I guess, testing their firmness.

  "This part looks good; the legs spread well," he observed. I noticed that his face was less red now, though there was still a flush to his cheeks and, I thought, a bit of a wild look in his eyes.

  "It's fine, really." I tried to take the stand back from him, but he pulled it out of reach, turning his body ninety degrees away from me. He unfolded the top part that held the music, then squeezed it shut again.

  "Now, the part that holds the music is functional. Give me what you're playing."

  "No, it's OK. I've tested it; it works."

  Still holding the stand like a long-necked bird, he kept it at arm's length. But he leaned over toward me and whispered. "The dressing room, back there." He gestured, but I already knew the place he was pointing to. I'd seen Sally come from there earlier.

  "Dressing room?" I tried to play dumb. All I wanted right now was the music stand back. "I'm next. Please give me. . . ."

  "I'll kiss your flute," he hissed, touching his lips to the folded top section of my music stand. "And you can kiss mine!"

  "And now Susan Bell on the flute," called Blind Bill Martin from the front of the stage. Whew! He'd rescued me.

  "I'm . . . it's me," I said, reaching for the stand in a frantic, eager way.

  At last he let me take it. I guess his desire to keep his position with the pageant remained a strong force in Mr. Pierce: the show had to go on. But I knew I would have to say or do something about his unofficial demand before the swimsuit competition.

  Meanwhile, I played the flute. And, you know, nothing makes me prouder now about my role in the entire pageant than the fact that, after yet another unpleasant exchange with the Senior Consultant, I could breathe evenly enough to make music.

  I would learn, in fact, that I scored fairly high in the talent competition. My piece was not that ambitious, but I played without flaws and with (according to my mother) attention to the music's subtlety.

  Two tangential things, I think, also contributed to the judges' response: they'd not heard a flute solo in any past pageants; and my slender form in the evening gown was accentuated in the effort of playing.

  Like Liz, who played the piano, I hadn't changed outfits for my performance. Mary Dunkin also stayed in her evening gown for her reading from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Sally, on the other hand, needed more freedom of movement in her baton twirling.

  Once again this veteran competitor had a trick up her sleeve. Well, no, not up her sleeve, since her outfit had no sleeves. Her outfit was so skimpy the missing sleeves were hardly noticeable, especially when you consider the things she did with that baton!

  My own appearance in the formal gown generated an effect similar to what Randy had so clearly felt back in the summer. I was standing up tall, holding my instrument parallel to my shoulders, breathing with my abdominal muscles to sustain the column of air creating music. The standard pageant dress hugged my midsection, and my uplifted arms directed male eyes to my flat, thin middle. It was an effect that would be magnified when I wore the swimsuit Sandy and I had altered at the last minute.

  When Sally performed, of course, she made even more of her feminine form. I had maintained a youthful naiveté about the purpose and results of the talent competition in the Miss Route 66 Pageant. I believed that the three judges would impartially identify the best talent, even if they were swayed by other qualities. Such things as audience expectation, performer showmanship, and flamboyant sex appeal were, I felt, peripheral. But Sally knew the full power of these forces.

  There were three elements to her winning performance: sight, sound, and motion. I've already mentioned that her outfit was as skimpy as a swimsuit, showing arms, legs, shoulders. She was wearing the same transparent hose that sang as she moved, though, so throughout her routine an erotic hum rose
and fell in the judges' ears. But there was a new sound also, a throaty whistle sometimes in counterpoint to her legs' song, at other times echoing it.

  Sally had embedded two whistles in the rubber tips of her baton, and they sounded in its many spins and twists. Revolving on her fingertips or soaring close to the ropes that raised and lowered curtains, the baton became another voice of Sally's desire. Its syncopated, deep-pitched tone blended with the hum of her legs and an audible breathing that grew as her effort increased--short, sharp intakes of air as she stepped, jumped, turned. All these sounds expressed her drive to win, her ambition to dazzle and to hold the judges.

  The final manifestation of her performance was motion. America was still in that transition between formal ballroom dancing and less scripted, hip-oriented forms not far from the bump-and-grind routines of a stripper. The attention of popular culture had gone below the waist. So, while Fairfield's mayor, the president of Thompson and Pollman Insurance, and the head of our most prestigious law firm began by watching Sally's baton, their eyes traveled south as she performed, and stayed there. She won the talent portion of the competition.

  5

  "You're in the top three, I'm sure of it," said Mary as we all filed back to the group dressing room after the talent competition.

  "You think so?"

  "I was watching the judges' eyes when you played the flute. They like you."

  "I was so nervous! I'm afraid to look at them. And how do you do well in the evening gown competition? All you can do is walk, and stand there, and walk."

  "Trust me. I can tell these things. I don't mean you're winning. Sally's got them hypnotized. But, with your slim figure, you can do well in the swimsuit. You come up big there and you might be first runner-up!"

  This was exciting. I'd either been concentrating so hard on not messing up or being shocked by Sally's tactics that I hadn't really thought about whether I might be doing better than the other girls. The runner-up--that would be fun!

  I glanced over at Sally, who was examining her face in a hand-held mirror. She curled her lips and studied the mirror, as if worried that some piece of food had gotten stuck in her teeth. They looked bright and clean to me. She flashed a big smile at her own image, then put the mirror down in order to trade her revealing baton twirling outfit for a revealing swimsuit.

  Watching her, I remembered Mr. Pierce and the deal he'd offered me over the phone--second to Sally. I could cinch it by doing him a "little favor." But it was a favor I didn't think I could grant. I'd even rather deal with Randy's "mouth organ" than Mr. Pierce's dreamsicle. Ugh!

  Out on stage Blind Bill was entertaining the crowd while we all changed into our swimsuits. He was telling stories from past pageants and singing the usual country songs, about hard-hearted women and down-and-out men.

  I tried to imagine the perfect ending to the pageant, to my many months of preparation and planning. But all I saw was that little drop of drool in the corner of Mr. Pierce's mouth.

  Putting my flute away in its velvet-lined case, I could at least congratulate myself on a fine performance. I realized the instrument I'd bought on a whim had come to feel a part of me. I thought of my mother and her flute, hidden away in the basement for so many years. Why had she given it up, stopped playing music?

  When, with Sandy, I'd first carried this flute home, I had been looking for a new mode of expression, even a different self to express. Any musical potential I might have possessed had been ignored by my parents and teachers, not maliciously but probably because of my older sister's more obvious talents.

  Once I'd taken the dramatic step of purchasing the flute, my life changed. Daily practice sessions with my mother bred a new confidence and assertiveness, which carried over into other activities. Before long I separated myself from Randy and began to think of different boys, boys of a different sort.

  I was probably aiming too high in Paul Thornton, the college guy. But his younger brother Larry had shown some praiseworthy characteristics. He was intelligent and had a plan for college, for life thereafter. And he was interested in me. In fact, he was here in the auditorium, encouraging me to do my best.

  Was Paul Thornton here, too? Hmm, probably so. So far as anyone knew, he was still dating Sally. So he'd be here for her. The Thornton family was divided, then, in allegiances at the pageant. Would it be, as we'd learned in American history class, like the Civil War where "brother fought brother"?

  Well, no matter what boy I was dating, I wasn't going to abandon the flute. It would remain a symbol of my strength, really, to the end of my days. Why had my mother put aside her talent when she went to work and when she married my father?

  If I thought of my neighborhood pears, Mom's life seemed to contradict a natural process: blossom, fruit, seed, plant, and it all begins again. She had been a bud, rich with promise. In school she'd opened in beauty.

  Larry, I suppose, could have used a worm's life cycle to describe the same arrested development, but I hadn't paid quite enough attention to his lectures to identify all the correct stages. The point would be the same: something happened to block her growth.

  I didn't want to blame my father, competent telephone repairman in early adulthood, established manager through his middle years. Especially because of the story of his proposal--romantically, on a private line--he didn't appear to me as a villain, someone who demanded his wife concentrate only on his career.

  True, that's what she had done, support him in his work and raise his children. But she did these things with good cheer, not as if she were a downtrodden, dispirited spouse.

  My mother's decision to stop playing must have come before her courtship then, before she met my father. A scenario occurred to me: competition for a music scholarship to some prestigious institution. Mother knew she had a good chance and practiced for months.

  After a long bus journey to--where? Oh, let's say William Jewell, Kansas City. She arrives there for an audition, a chance to win a scholarship that will pay for everything, the basis for a later career.

  Her parents, who've endured years of scrimping during the Depression to pay for her lessons, are about to achieve their goal. That talent spotted when their daughter was perhaps four or five years old, whistling a tune along with the Sunday school piano, has been nurtured and protected. Now it will carry her on to a future barely imaginable in the little town of her youth. She's on to Chicago, New York, Vienna.

  She wins the scholarship! But then the truth becomes clear: in order to study with the great masters here and abroad she must leave her family behind. There is no room for sentiment in this profession. She must sacrifice for her talent, for the benefit of the world of audiences she can inspire.

  So, she turns down the scholarship. Yes, that's it. She retreats from greatness, goes to work as a bank teller to help her parents, who are aging. She meets this telephone lineman, falls in love, marries, has children. Her life has been diverted into the small-time domestic realm I have known, her only real outlet the star quality of her elder daughter.

  Now I know it's time to go the little changing room, to make my own decision about the future. Do I need to give up on fame and fortune? Why not risk a little, new Susan Bell, you strong person who has found ambition, who knows desire? And this little thing I'm going to do for Mr. Pierce--how bad can it be? It'll go on for a couple of minutes, and then it'll be time for the show.

  Down the hall I pass Sally returning. We are both in our swimsuits. She gives me her usual broad smile and says cheerfully, "One more event to go!"

  "Yes," I reply, but at the same time I notice her breasts straining against her suit. They seem larger than ever!

  Still, I think, I can be runner-up. I draw my shoulders back, suck in my stomach, and walk across the back of the stage to the little changing room. This will only take a minute, a small price for a big first step.

  Pierce is there, the door open halfway as he sits in a straightback chair.

  "Ah, you're here," he says with a grin. He g
lances over my shoulder to see if anyone else is nearby. "Let's talk about, um, the order for the swimsuit competition." He stands and backs against the far wall, leaving room for me to come in.

  "I . . . " I begin.

  "You don't need a chair," he interrupts excitedly. He picks it up with one hand and sets it outside the room. I step aside to give him space and then hesitate on the threshold. "But you need to be quick if I'm also going to talk to the judges."

  He grins, and I see his lips are wet with spit.

  "Mr. Pierce," I say. "You're going to have to eat your own dreamsicle."

  6

  I won the swimsuit competition, but lost the pageant--to Sally Winchester, of course.

  That's not even the worst of it. Sally also won the award for being the most helpful contestant during all the preparations, Best Roadside Attraction. Now we all understood the reason for her slumber party the night before and her solicitous concern that the other girls have a good time at her house.