by Tom Wilson
"Good evening! How's everybody feeling tonight?" I said, hoping for a few "Whoo's!" which would signal the okay to keep going. The deafening clatter continued, as Bob Tanksley leaned against the back wall, shaking his head sadly and guzzling scotch.
"HOW'S EVERYBODY DOING TONIGHT?! FEELING GOOD?!" I shouted into the microphone. I got a smattering of "Whoo's" from the middle section, so began the set addressing them, cutting the rest of the mob out of my universe. If only two people are willing to listen, it's my job to find them, amuse them, and hope that they spread the happiness, or at least one of them is holding my check.
"Well, I've been watching you folks tonight, and let me tell you, you people must be great at selling frozen peas, because you sure can't dance!" A good natured dig like that will usually break the ice, especially since I mentioned their business. Unless it fell flat because they were too drunk, as was the case here.
"Ooo!" a man wearing a reversible vest over a polyester tie bellowed, "Let's see you do better!"
"No, thanks, sir!" I said, taking the mike out of its stand and walking away from him across the stage, "but save me a dance for later, okay?"
"Whatta you, queer?!" he burped after me.
I sliced through the spotlight, squinting into the glare and looking for a face to connect with. Husbands and wives offered me only the backs of their heads as they told loud stories about golf, and the CEO was turning in his chair, looking behind him to make eye contact with whoever had the idea to hire the comedian. A hundred yards away, at the far corner of the room, I saw a black mask and white hat through the round window of the kitchen door. I'd left the Ranger in the street an hour earlier, waiting for the erupting volcano show in front of the Mirage Hotel, but there he was, grinning behind the door sweeping open and closed by an army of busboys. He waved to me and gave me a strong thumbs up, until the door swept open and he accidentally smacked a Vietnamese waiter in the head.
I went back to the drunk guy in the vest, asking "You look like you were an athlete in high school. Were you, sir?"
Since the din of conversations hadn't calmed down yet, I had to work the crowd, asking people questions and hoping their co-workers might shut up long enough to hear the answers. The vested drunk stood up and spun in place, a shirt tail flapping across a hairy slab of white belly.
"Thought we were gonna dance!" He said, laughing with tablemates.
"Were you an athlete in school?" I said.
He stared at the ceiling to think of a funny answer, but stared for too long, forgetting the question completely.
"Okay, thanks for playing! Never mind!" I said, pounding across the stage to get my guitar. If no one will listen and the ship is going down, my plan of attack is to play sing-a-longs until I fill up the amount of time spelled out in the contract. Even the loudest, drunkest people in the world will put their arms around each other to sing "Michael Row The Boat Ashore" together, only to get choked up and begin hugging strangers during "Bye Bye, Miss American Pie."
The clatter and shouts continued as I plugged the guitar in, and the next time I looked over at the kitchen door, the Ranger had walked into the room and was standing against the wall behind a black curtain hiding supply tables of water pitchers and coffee urns. He wasn't looking at me anymore, or offering a thumbs up. He was scanning the crowd, sadly watching their total disinterest.
"I wasn't an athlete myself!" I shouted over the clamor, "I was a band geek! Was anybody in the band?"
The man with the vest awakened again to stand up and shriek "Skin flute!"
"No, thanks for the offer, but I played the tuba, sir!" I said.
"Skin flute!" he replied.
The Ranger began slowly walking into the room and all I could think of was a couple of thousand dollars down the tubes. Unlike many comics, I wasn't planning on losing that money at the craps table later that night. I wasn't planning on stripper gratuities or drinks for the lonely wives of wayward executives after the banquet. I planned on using the money to pay for food, clothing, and shelter, and the Ranger was walking toward me, ready to wreck the whole thing, since there was no clause on my contract providing for a large, crime fighting cowboy walking into the middle of my show.
He ambled through the obstacle course of tables, steering around chairs and dodging waiters. Women were the first to notice him, since men were loosening their belts and waiting for their next chance to talk. As the Ranger passed table after table, lit by hundreds of candles in orchid centerpieces, hairstyles turned to follow him and men choked on gulps of scotch, rubbing their eyes and looking at the glass of hooch like a double-take in a bad western.
"How many people have kids here? Huh? How many?" I said, waving my hand slightly next to my leg to get his attention. He stared right at me, moving forward as I gently shook my head "no."
"Do you have any children, sir?" I asked an elderly gentleman close to sleeping.
The Ranger drew closer, thumbs hooked into his gunbelt. Two tables away from the lip of the stage, he stopped and turned to the crowd, half of whom had shut up to stare at him, and the other half in full conversation, clueless to his entrance.
He scanned the ballroom from left to right and said "May I have your attention please?" It wasn't a shout, but a sincere question spoken loudly, and half the remaining conversations fell to silence. A half quiet room wasn't good enough for him, so he walked to the lip of the stage directly below me, where his hat was lit by the wash of the spotlight and said in a measured, but even louder voice, "Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, but may I have your attention, please?"
"Ranger, don't do this," I whispered, pulling the mike away from my mouth, "Get out of here."
"Attention please, folks!" he boomed across the wide expanse of heads, all slowly turning to face him.
Within seconds, a silence enveloped the room that could only be recreated in a hotel ballroom when it's empty. The thick carpet absorbed the last clinks of coffee cups back into saucers, and busboys with pitchers of ice water stood at attention, listening and immobile.
"Thank you," the Ranger said, the embodiment of earnest concern, "Now, if you would be so kind, I would appreciate it if you'd give my friend here your attention. He's a man like you, just out here trying to do his job. He's a hard worker, but none of you are going to be able to enjoy it because you're not listening."
"Please," I mumbled, "Please stop."
"All of you sitting at this shindig got a great chance to sell your frozen vegetables, and by the looks of some of the trophies you've given out tonight, you've done very well." "Ranger, enough."
"I congratulate you. Now, isn't it simple fairness to give this man the same chance to do what you've done? To do your job in the greatest country on earth to do it in?"
The room seemed to get even quieter as he spoke, as the distant sounds from the kitchen stopped, and an army of dishwashers and busboys filled the round windows with their faces.
"There's an Indian prayer that goes--"
"Native American," I whispered, "Not Indian."
"Great Spirit, grant that I may not judge another man until I have walked a mile in his moccasins."
I pulled the microphone out of the stand and leaned over the edge behind him, my soft breaths amplified through the ballroom. The over the top listening pose I took and the dubious look I gave him behind his back got a murmur of chuckles.
"Thank you for listening, friends," he said, "And I ask that you continue to do so."
He started walking through the tables out of the spotlight, but it was a paying gig that was going down the toilet. I had no choice.
"So, what exactly are you dressed up to be, buckaroo?" I asked into the mike.
He turned to me, confused. "Pardon me?"
"What did you do, flunk out of rodeo clown college or something?"
"Bring him up onstage!" someone yelled from the back.
"No," I said, faking cool detachment, "I don't know this guy, but I do love the Buffalo Bruce outfit!"
In the
big laugh that followed, the Ranger looked at me with hurt eyes that shame me as I type these words.
"Tom, I was just--"
"Skin flute!" the idiot in the vest reprised.
The Ranger stepped toward him and took back everyone's attention. "Sir," he said to the man, "You need attention, don't you? You need attention that you've not been given, so all of your guts to stand up and speak come out of a bottle. That's sad, friend. Sad."
"Skin flute," the guy mumbled in a confused whine as he sat down.
In my flashing brain, I was reaching for a good line to link to the two men together, vested skin flute man and the Ranger. Vest? Flute? Skin? The words spun in the comic velodrome of my mind, searching for a miraculous thread of contact to hang a joke on. I smiled blankly, ambling across the stage like I already knew what I was going to say, though nothing had occurred to me yet. There wasn't a word, phrase, old stock comedy line, or piece of physical schtick that would bring the two men together into one joke. The two men had nothing in common, and the only comic insight that popped up, ready to be blurted out was that I was the one who had the most in common with the vested Neanderthal, since I watched a friend try to help me in the best way he could, and I turned into a common heckler, yelling stupid cynicism into a microphone to save a paycheck.
"He's right," I said, "the Ranger's right."
I don't know which crowd is better for a comedy show - a noisy throng who don't even care if there's a show going on, or a silent crowd, embarrassed and upset that they've been scolded by the One Ranger. He walked through the maze of chairs and passed a huddle of hotel security guards as they squeezed through the front door. I didn't say anything for a while, pacing onstage and leaving the only sound in the room the faint hum of the sound system. My ears were hot with the shame of doing badly in a meaningless show for an empty headed audience, and the deeper shame that I'd turned on my friend and chosen the safety of the group. A group I hated, but a group that paid money.
"Skin flute!" the man shouted in the silence one more time.
I've watched a stand up comedian wade into the crowd toward a heckler, his mind snapping in the cauldron of pressure to go clock the guy three different times, the most memorable being the comic Richard Belzer, who hit a loudmouth with a microphone stand, swinging it like a baseball bat and bending it around the guy's neck. I was teetering on the edge of being banned from Las Vegas convention halls for killing a corporate diner with a head butt, but I stopped my feet from bounding off the stage. I couldn't do the same for my mouth, though.
"Shut your mouth before I come out there and shut it for you, you fat, drunk creep," I said.
There goes the mortgage money.
"You fat moron! The last time I saw a reversible vest, I was doing the hustle at my junior prom."
"Oh yeah?" the guy bellowed.
"Oh yeah?!" I guffawed, "Is that the best you can do? Yell skin flute sixty times, and then go to the second string comebacks? Oh yeah?"
"What are you gonna do about it?"
"I'm gonna do nothing here, stupid, because they have video cameras all over this place, but on Monday I'm gonna come into your job, take away your mop, and kick your ass!"
Yes, a stock line that's been used ten thousand times by desperate comics, but at ten thousand and one the room still exploded in laughter. Lucky for me they hated the guy.
"Ahh! Jameson! Get your mop!" a man shouted from his table.
As the hail of abuse pelted the heckler back into his chair, silent and confused, the crowd's shock turned to happy attention. Somehow, through the intervention of a drunk heckler and a dead cowboy, I got the rapt attention of the room, and delivered a reasonably funny set of frozen vegetable jokes, taking long breaks to sip water and steal glances at the empty window at the kitchen door, waiting for the face of the Ranger to appear.
I signed autographs for a line of salespeople after the show, shoving cocktail napkins at me, saying "It's for my nephew…so tell me, who are you again?" I posed for photos with weaving brunettes and their sweaty husbands, smiling, but peering over their shoulders for the glimpse of a cowboy hat.
"Seen that cowboy that was here earlier?" I asked a bartender near the door.
"He was talking to security out in the hallway," he said.
"Did they take him somewhere?"
"Nah, they just asked for his autograph and let him go," he said.
Dodging rows of slot machines and slurred compliments from conventioneers, I made it to the security desk, manned by two sturdy women in tight uniforms.
"Pardon me, ladies, but have you seen a cowboy in a mask?"
"Is he with you?" the sturdier one said.
"You saw him?"
"Had my picture taken with him! But he had to go," she said.
"He left somewhere?"
"We had to ask him to leave. Even if the guns are fake, he wouldn't hand them over."
"Where did he go?" I asked.
They both pointed right out the front door.
I stood in the sad splash of muted yellow light, turning down the Las Vegas Strip and picking through the tourists and bus stop crazies, looking for a flicker of red scarf or white hat on the dark pavement. Las Vegas boils down to a titanic pair of neon candy breasts, and rolling the dice and popping the champagne is shallow rapture for lost boys growing donkey ears and smoking cigars as they chase the phantom fun they saw on the T.V. commercial. But walking out of the front doors of a casino toward the pavement, the lights and promise dim so quickly you feel robbed of money, time, and dignity before you reach the curb. The cars crawled by with windshields reflecting neon stripes of happy color, and I caught his silhouette, a tiny cowboy in swirls of blinking red. He was across the street, sitting on the edge of the fountain at Caesar's Palace, watching traffic and waving to pedestrians.
"Hello, Ranger," I said, dodging a cab as I crossed the street.
"How did the show go after I left?" he asked.
"It was a pretty tough gig, but it ended up okay."
"Good," he said, staring into fountain ripples, "I'm glad."
"They kicked you out of the hotel?" I said.
He shrugged his shoulders. "Oh well, it's their business. They make the rules."
"You took pictures with the guards?"
"I did. Nice people," he said, chuckling, "then they threw me out."
A stretch limo rolled by us, and in the tinted window's reflection I saw both of us, silent in the middle of splashing water, honking horns, and under an eighty foot tall jumbo screen advertising an animated breakfast buffet.
"I apologize, Ranger. I was wrong to treat you like that when you were trying to help me in your own way. You actually ended up helping me get through that show, and I appreciate it."
"Tom--"
"No, wait a sec. I had a real problem up there, and turned on you to get a rise out of the crowd and I'm sorry."
The Ranger laughed. "Oh, don't worry about that! That's show biz!"
"What?"
"Look, Tom, I've twirled these guns at supermarket grand openings, I've worked carnivals, heck, I even lived in New York City. You think I can't take a punch?"
"It didn't bother you?"
"Well, it didn't tickle in front of a whole lot of people, but like I said, that's show biz! If I poke my nose in and it gets smacked, well, that's my problem, isn't it?"
"But I was just upset, and I--"
"Sure you were upset. But so what? One bad show?"
"Come on," I said, "That was really bad."
"Not that bad," he said, "Have you ever done rope tricks in front of a supermarket?"
"Yeah, but that guy with the vest."
"The man with the vest was not himself," he said.
"You should have let me shoot him."
He laughed, and slapped his leg.
"Come on!" I said, "It was a terrible gig!"
"Did you get paid?" he said.
"Thanks to you I did."
"Well this is a marathon, buddy. You
're running like it's the fifty yard dash."
"Still. I'm sorry."
"Fair enough. I forgive you, friend."
We shook hands under the dancing waters.
"Besides," he said, "It's about time we get down to business."
TWENTY
A few years ago, there was a news story on television that the networks played into an impossible to erase mental groove, because they had videotape of cops freaking out and shooting bullets into a raging beast, and that's good T.V. I think it happened in Florida, or maybe I'm just guessing because the craziest videos of horrible weather and violent dirtbags usually happen in Florida. A small traveling circus was in town, with an old elephant whose life was little more than riding in a truck, walking in a circle, and climbing back onto the truck. For years the elephant had been giving rides to hefty, cotton candy eating moms and dads and their kids, all perched on a steel bench high in the air and balanced on its back. Every long summer day they rode the elephant's back around a muddy field that served as a makeshift midway, lined with basketball hoops of impossible diameter and darts that couldn't pop a balloon if they were shot out of a bazooka. Who knows how long the elephant had been forced to carry human beings around at state fairs and car shows and circuses around the country, chained by its ankle and fed a constant stream of dirty hay and cotton candy fumes? Did the giant slave ever forget anyone? Did it remember every abusive, greasy-haired jerkweed that slapped him too hard? Every smoldering cigarette stepped on? Every chafe and scratch from the metal ladder on its back?
Completely predictably, after years of carrying tourists on its back only to head back to a stake in the ground with a chain on it, the elephant went berserk. The thing snapped out just like my brother Geoff used to. It ran around aimlessly under the big top, knocking things over with the bench on its back packed with kids, frozen in terror and clutching the thin safety bar atop two tons of trumpeting beast, completely out to lunch. Screaming Moms, running children - just like in King Kong movies, but real this time, and a bunch of fat cops trying to figure out what to do with the thing, still kicking holes in cars and showing no signs of willingness to talk to anybody in the "hostage task force trailer." Then, in a moment of elephantine confusion, when the crazed goliath just didn't know what to go destroy next, the bullets started to fly. BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM.
