by Stephen King
The thing I find most charming about the movies is the fluid way time passes. You might start off with this nerdy teenager—no friends, no money, lousy parents—and all at once he turns into Brad Pitt in his prime. The only thing separating the nerd from the god is a title card that says 14 YEARS LATER.
“It’s wicked to wish time away,” my mother used to lecture us kids—usually when we were pining for summer vacation in the depths of February, or waiting for Halloween to hurry up and come—and probably she was right, but I can’t help thinking that such temporal jumps might be a good thing for people living bad lives, and between the advent of the Reagan administration in 1980 and the Tulsa State Fair in 1992, I was living a very bad life. There were blackouts, but no title cards. I had to live every day of those years, and when I couldn’t get high, some of the days were a hundred hours long.
The fade-in goes like this: The Cumberlands became the Heaters, and the Heaters became the J-Tones. Our last gig as a college band was the huge and hilarious Graduation Dance ’78 in Memorial Gym. We played from eight until two in the morning. Shortly thereafter, Jay Pederson hired a locally popular chick vocalist who could also play both tenor and alto sax like nobody’s business. Her name was Robin Storrs. She turned out to be a perfect fit for us, and by August the J-Tones had become Robin and the Jays. We turned into one of Maine’s premier party bands. We had all the gigs we could play, and life was good.
Now here comes the dissolve.
• • •
Fourteen years later, Jamie Morton woke up in Tulsa. Not in a good hotel, not even in a so-so chain motel; this was a roachpit called the Fairgrounds Inn. Such places were Kelly Van Dorn’s idea of economy. It was eleven in the morning, and the bed was wet. I wasn’t surprised. When you crash for nineteen hours, assisted by Madame H., wetting your bed is almost inevitable. I suppose you’d even do it if you died in that drug-assisted slumber, although look at the bright side: in that case you’d never wake up in pee-soaked Jockeys again.
I did the zombie walk to the bathroom, sniffling and watering at the eyes, shucking my skivvies on the way. I made my shaving kit the first stop . . . but not to clear the stubble. My works were still there, along with a taped-down sandwich bag containing a couple of grams. No reason to think anyone would break in to steal such a paltry stash, but checking is second nature to a junkie.
With that taken care of, I addressed the bowl and rid myself of the urine that had accumulated since my nighttime accident. As I was standing there, I realized that something of importance had slipped my mind. I was currently playing with a country crossover band, and we had been scheduled to open for Sawyer Brown the night before, on the big Oklahoma Stage at the Tulsa State Fair. A primo gig, especially for a not-ready-for Nashville band like White Lightning.
“Sound check at five o’clock,” Kelly Van Dorn had told me. “You’ll be there, right?”
“Sure,” I’d said. “Don’t worry about me.”
Oops.
Coming out of the bathroom, I saw a folded note poking under the door. I had a pretty good idea what it said, but I picked it up and read it, just to be sure. It was short and not sweet.
I called the Union High Music Department and lucked into a kid who could play just enough rhythm and slide guitar to get us through. He was happy to pocket your $600. By the time you get this, we’ll be on the way to Wildwood Green. Don’t even think about following us. You’re fired. Sorry as hell to do it, but enough is enough.
Kelly
PS: I guess you probably won’t pay attention to this, Jamie, but if you don’t clean up your act, you’ll be in prison a year from now. That’s if you’re lucky. Dead if you’re not.
I tried to stick the note in my back pocket and it fell on the balding green carpet instead—I’d forgotten that I wasn’t wearing anything. I picked it up, tossed it in the wastebasket, and peeked out the window. The courtyard parking lot was totally empty except for an old Ford and some farmer’s broke-ass pickup. Both the Explorer the band rode in and the equipment van that our sound guy drove were gone. Kelly hadn’t been kidding. The out-of-tune nutbags had left me. Which was probably all for the best. I sometimes thought if I had to play one more drinkin-n-cheatin song, I’d lose what little mind I had left.
I decided to make re-upping the room my first priority. I had no desire to spend another night in Tulsa, especially with the State Fair going full blast down the street, but I’d need some time to think about my next career move. I needed to score, too, and if you can’t find someone to sell you dope at a state fair, you’re not trying.
I kicked the damp skivvies into the corner—a tip for the chambermaid, I thought snidely—and unzipped my duffel. Nothing in there but dirty clothes (I had meant to find a Laundromat yesterday, another thing that had slipped my mind), but at least they were dry dirty clothes. I dressed and trekked across the cracked asphalt of the courtyard to the motel office, my zombie walk slowly perking up to the zombie shuffle. My throat hurt every time I swallowed. Just a little extra something to add to the fun.
The lady on the desk was a hard-faced country girl of about fifty, currently living her life under a volcano of teased red hair. A talk show host was on her little television, chatting up a storm with Nicole Kidman. Above the TV was a framed picture of Jesus bringing a boy and girl a puppy. I was in no way surprised. In flyover country, they have a way of getting Christ and Santa all mixed up.
“Your group has already checked out,” she said, after finding my name in her register book. She had the local accent, which sounds like a badly tuned banjo. “Left a couple of hours ago. Said they were driving all the way to North Cah’lina.”
“I’m aware,” I said. “I’m no longer with the band.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Creative differences,” I said.
The eyebrow climbed higher.
“I’ll be staying another night.”
“Uh-huh, okay. Cash or credit card?”
I had two hundred or so in cash, but most of that liquidity was earmarked for the dope purchase I hoped to make at the fair, so I gave her my BankAmericard. She called it in and waited, phone cocked between her ear and one meaty shoulder, now watching an ad for paper towels that could apparently drink up spills the size of Lake Michigan. I watched with her. When the talk show returned, Nicole Kidman was joined by Tom Selleck, and the country girl was still on hold. She didn’t seem to mind, but I did. The itches had started, and my bad leg was starting to throb. Just as another ad came on, the country girl perked up. She swiveled around in her chair, looked out her window at a blazing blue Oklahoma sky, and chatted briefly. Then she hung up and handed back my credit card.
“Declined. Which makes me dubious about taking cash. Supposing you have it.”
That was mean, but I gave her my best smile, just the same. “The card’s good. They made a mistake. It happens all the time.”
“Then you’ll be able to rectify it at some other motel,” she said. (Rectify! Such a big word for a country girl!) “There’s four more down the block, but they ain’t much.”
Unlike this roadside Ritz-Carlton, I thought, but what I said was, “Try the card again.”
“Honey,” she said, “I look at you and I don’t have to.”
I sneezed, turning my head to catch it on the short sleeve of my Charlie Daniels Band tee. Which was okay since it hadn’t been washed lately. Or even not so lately. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I left my first husband when him and both his brothers took to smokin the rock. No offense, but I know what I’m lookin at. Last night’s paid for—on the band’s credit card—but now that you’re what they call a solo artist, checkout time’s one o’clock.”
“On the door it says three.”
She leveled a chipped nail at a sign to the left of the calendar featuring Puppy-Giving Jesus: DURING STATE FAIR, SEPTEMBER 25 TO OC
TOBER 4, CHECOUT TIME WILL BE 1 PM.
“Checkout is spelled wrong,” I said. “You should rectify that.”
She glanced at the sign, then turned back to me. “So ’tis, but the one PM part needs no rectifyin.” She glanced at her watch. “That gives you an hour and a half. Don’t make me call the police, hon. At state fair time, they’re thicker’n flies on a fresh dog turd, and they’d be here in a jiff.”
“This is such bullshit,” I said.
That was a blurry time for me, but I remember her reply as clearly as if she had spoken it in my ear two minutes ago: “Uh-uh, honey, this is reality.”
Then she turned back to the television, where some fool was tapdancing.
• • •
I wasn’t going to try scoring dope in the daytime, not even at the state fair, so I stayed at the Fairgrounds Inn until one thirty (just to spite the country girl). Then I grabbed my duffel in one hand and my guitar case in the other, and set out walking. I made a stop at a Texaco station around where North Detroit Avenue becomes South Detroit. By then my walk had become a portside limp and my hip was throbbing with my heartbeat. In the men’s room I cooked up and delivered half my goods into the hollow of my left shoulder. Mellowness ensued. Both my sore throat and the ache in my leg began to recede.
My good left leg became my bad left leg on a sunny summer day in 1984. I was on a Kawasaki; the elderly asshole coming the other way was piloting a Chevrolet the size of a cabin cruiser. He wandered into my lane, leaving me a choice: either the soft shoulder or a head-on collision. I picked the obvious choice and made it past the asshole okay. The mistake was trying to swerve back onto the road at forty. Advice to all you novice riders out there: swerving on gravel at forty is a terrible idea. I dumped the bike and broke the leg in five places. I also shattered my hip. Shortly thereafter, I discovered the Joy of Morphine.
• • •
With my leg feeling better and the itches and twitches at bay, I was able to move on from the gas station with a bit more vigor, and by the time I got to the Greyhound terminal, I was asking myself why I’d stuck with Kelly Van Dorn and his screwed-up country band as long as I had. Playing weepy ballads (in the key of C, for God’s sake) was not what I was cut out for. I was a rocker, not a shitkicker.
I purchased a ticket on the following day’s noon bus to Chicago, which also bought me the right to stash my duffel and my Gibson SG—the only valuable possession I had left—in the baggage room. The ticket cost me twenty-nine dollars. I counted the rest sitting in a bathroom stall. It came to a hundred and fifty-nine bucks, about what I had expected. The future was looking brighter. I would score at the fair, find a place to crash—maybe at a local homeless shelter, maybe outside—and tomorrow I’d ride the big gray dog to Shytown. There was a musicians’ exchange there, as there is in most big cities, with players sitting around, telling jokes, swapping gossip, and looking for gigs. For some this wasn’t easy (accordion players, for instance), but bands were always looking for competent rhythm guitar players, and I was a smidge more than that. By 1992 I could even play a little lead, if called upon to do so. And if I wasn’t too wrecked. The important thing was to get to Chicago and get a gig before Kelly Van Dorn put out the word that I was unreliable, and the pisshead just might.
With at least six hours to kill until dark, I cooked up the rest of my shit and put it where it would do the most good. Once that was taken care of, I bought a paperback western at the newsstand, sat on a bench with it opened to someplace in the middle, and nodded off. When I woke myself up with a volley of sneezes, it was seven o’clock, and time for the former rhythm guitarist of White Lightning to hunt up some of the good stuff.
• • •
By the time I got to the fair, sunset was just a bitter orange line in the west. Although I wanted to save most of my money for a buy, I splurged on a taxi to get there, because I wasn’t feeling good at all. It wasn’t just the usual coming-down twitches and aches, either. The sore throat was back. There was a high, sour humming in my ears, and I felt hot all over. I told myself that last was normal, because it was one hot bitchkitty of a night. As for the rest, I was sure six or seven hours of sleep would put me right. I could catch it on the bus. I wanted to be all I could be before I re-enlisted in the Rock and Roll Army.
I bypassed the main entrance to the fair, because only an idiot would attempt to buy heroin at a craft exhibit or livestock exhibition. Beyond it was the entrance to Bell’s Amusement Park. That adjunct to the Tulsa State Fair is gone now, but in September of 1992, Bell’s was blasting away full force. Both roller coasters—the wooden Zingo and the more modern Wildcat—were whirling and twirling, trailing happy screams behind each hairpin turn and suicidal plunge. There were long lines at the water slides, the Himalaya, and the Phantasmagoria dark ride.
I ignored these and idled my way down the midway past the food concessions, where the smells of fried dough and sausages—usually enticing—made me feel a little sick to my stomach. There was a guy with the right look hanging around the Pitch Til U Win shy, and I almost approached him, but caught a narc vibe when I got close. The shirt he was wearing (COCAINE! BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS!) was just a little too on-the-nose. I kept moving, past the shooting gallery, the wooden milkbottle shy, the Skeeball, the Wheel of Fortune. I was feeling worse all the time, my skin hotter and that humming in my ears louder. My throat was so sore I winced with every swallow.
Up ahead was an elaborate mini-golf layout. It was mostly filled with laughing teenagers, and I thought I had arrived at Ground Zero. Wherever there are teenagers out for a night of fun, there are dealers in the vicinity who are happy to help them maximize said fun. And oh yeah, I could see a couple of fellows who had just the right look. By their shifty eyes and unwashed hair shalt thou know them.
The midway ended at a T junction beyond the mini-golf, one way leading back to the fairgrounds, the other to the racetrack. I had no desire to go to either place, but I’d been hearing a strange electric crackle off to the right, followed by applause, laughter, and cries of amazement. Now, as I drew closer to the junction, I could see that each crackle was accompanied by a bright blue flash that reminded me of lightning. The lightning on Skytop, to be perfectly specific. I hadn’t thought of that in years. Whatever the gaff was, it had drawn a big crowd. I decided the sharpies hanging around the golf course could wait a few minutes. Guys like that never go away until they shut off the neon, and I wanted to see who was making lightning on this hot and clear Oklahoma night.
An amplified voice cried, “Now that you have seen the power of my Lightning Maker—the only one in the world, I assure you—I’ll give an actual demonstration of the wonderful portrait that one portrait of Alexander Hamilton from your wallet or purse will buy you; one amazing demonstration before I open my Electric Studio and offer you the chance to sit for the photographic representation of a lifetime! But I’ll need a volunteer so you’ll see exactly what you’ll be getting for the best ten dollars you ever spent! Volunteer? May I have a volunteer? It’s perfectly safe, I assure you! Come on, folks, I always heard Sooners were famous in the Lower Forty-eight for their bravery!”
There was a good-size crowd, fifty or sixty, in front of a raised stage. The canvas backdrop was six feet wide and at least twenty feet high. On it was a photograph almost as big as a movie screen image. It featured a beautiful young woman on what appeared to be a ballroom floor. Her black hair was piled atop her head in a series of complicated twirls and tucks that must have taken hours to create. Her strapless evening gown was cut low, the tops of her breasts curving sweetly above it. She was wearing diamond earrings and bloodred lipstick.
Facing the giant ballroom girl was an old-fashioned camera, the nineteenth-century kind that stands on a tripod and has a black drape the photographer can throw over his head. Placed as it was, you would have said it could only snap the ballroom girl from the knees down. Next to it was a flash-powder tray on a post.
The black-suited, top-hatted gaffmeister had one loosely curled hand on the camera, and I knew him at once.
All that is clear, but my memory of what happened next is untrustworthy—I freely admit it. I was a longtime junkie who had graduated to the needle two years previous, first just skin-popping, but more and more frequently aiming for the vein. I was malnourished and severely underweight. On top of that, I was running a temperature. It was the flu, and it had come on fast. Getting up that morning, I’d thought I just had the usual case of heroin sniffles, a cold at worst, but by the time I saw Charles Jacobs standing beside an old-fashioned tripod camera and in front of a canvas backdrop with PORTRAITS IN LIGHTNING written over a giant girl, I felt like I was living in a dream. It didn’t surprise me to see my old minister, now with touches of gray at his temples and lines (faint ones) bracketing his mouth. It wouldn’t have surprised me if my late mother and sister had joined him onstage, dressed as Playboy Bunnies.
A couple of men raised their hands in response to Jacobs’s call for volunteers, but he laughed and pointed at the beautiful girl looming over his shoulder. “I’m sure you guys are brave as the devil on Saturday night, but none of you would look good in a strapless.”
Good-natured laughter greeted this.
“I want a gal,” said the fellow who showed me Peaceable Lake when I was but a tyke in short pants. “I want a pretty gal! A pretty little Sooner gal! How ’bout you folks? You down with that?”
