“She’s just another music lover,” Jesse said as he hugged Amy to reassure her.
Meanwhile, The Wheelers were taking center stage. Dale reached out to greet Dupre. “It’s so good to see you, big daddy. We were worried about you.”
Dupre pretended to be offended. “So worried you left town.”
Butch came over and shook Dupre’s hand. “Dupre, how’s it going, man? I see you beat the heat.”
Big Ben from the Wheelers joined the reunion. “The heat’s been dodged. All is well. And I got to say, you guys sound better than ever. Who is this keyboard player?”
Rick looked up warily at the giant biker. “I’m Rick. You must be Big Ben. I’ve heard good things about you. I’m the keyboard man, the one with the big organ.”
Everybody laughed as The Wheelers and The Divebomberz got down to hand shaking and back slapping. The rest of the crowd gave the band and the motorcycle gang all the room they needed.
Johnny sent over several trays of drinks. As the beer and tequila were arriving, Dupre managed to whisper in Jesse’s ear. “I don’t want to alarm you, but I’m told our bikes outside have attracted some unwanted attention.”
“From the police?” Jesse asked.
“No, some bike club up here,” Dupre said. “Don’t worry, we won’t start anything if they don’t.”
“That’s not very comforting,” Jesse said as Amy wrapped her arms around him.
Amy was excited. “The band sounds so hot I can’t believe it. And, hello, Dupre. Is that really you? Last time I saw you, you were giving me some serious trouble at the Safari Club.”
“Aw, you know I was just foolin’ ‘round. And don’t forget I helped Jesse save you from being buried alive.”
“That you did,” Amy said as she hugged him carefully. “And I will always thank you for it.”
Dupre graciously bowed out of the hug. “Good to see your beautiful face again. We rode all the way up here to Shreveport to hear our favorite band. And I have to agree with you, they sound great. They keep getting better and better. It won’t be long before they’ll be too big to pay any attention to us little people.”
“That will never happen,” Tim said as he moved to greet Dupre and Big Ben.
Big Ben opened his arms wide for Tim. “There’s the best fiddle player in the world. We all figured you’d of left this bunch of losers by now.”
Tim laughed. “Oh, no. Haven’t you heard? We’re headed for the top.”
“The top of what?” Dupre asked.
Tim got close to Dupre. “The top of the Royal Royce Hotel after this joint closes down. I hope you’ll come up and party with us.”
Dupre was visibly pleased by the invitation. He tilted his head back to laugh and held his arms up to an imaginary heaven. Then he came back to the moment. “Cool. I’ll send one of the boys to get us some rooms. We need a place to crash. It’s getting a little chilly to camp out.”
The band retired to Johnny’s upstairs office for what was left of their break. Amy joined them. The Wheelers did not. There were too many of them.
Amy was eager to see the bartender deliver drinks to the second story window. She wanted to see if the stories were true.
Once they were in Johnny’s office, Amy addressed the band. “I didn’t realize you guys are such a big deal up here. Jesse told me the crowds were good, but these people are absolutely rabid. I see why you have to take your breaks up here. And what’s with The Wheelers being here? Did they know I was coming, or what?”
Dale was happy to see Amy. “You seem to attract bikers; bikers and musicians. How was your drive up?”
Amy stretched her arms out to hug Dale. “Much longer than I expected. This place is all the way to Arkansas. I left school a little early. It took more than six hours to get here. I thought I was going to miss you.”
As she spoke, a knock on the window startled her. It was the bartender with a round of drinks, including one for Amy.
Butch laughed as she jumped at the sound. “You knew it was coming and it still scared you when it got here.”
“I must say,” Amy said as drinks were delivered through the upstairs window. “This is something you have to experience to believe.”
“So you haven’t checked into the Royal Royce yet?” Rene asked.
“No, and all my stuff is in the car,” Amy said. “Will it be safe? It’s parked around the corner.”
Butch reassured her. “Downtown Shreveport is quiet, except for Johnny’s. You’ll be fine.”
After their short break, the band went down to start the third set in a timely fashion. The bar was more crowded than when they had left. Jesse looked out over the heads as they kicked off the set and realized a problem was developing. He saw at least twenty bikers he had never seen before. They weren’t with the Wheelers. He could tell by their black leather jackets. He couldn’t make out the insignia, but it wasn’t a flaming wheel.
There were no problems throughout most of the third set. The place was rocking out in a peaceful manner. Then, the sea seemed to cave in near the center of the room. Jesse could see a hole opening up in the crowd. He knew it was a fight. People were going down.
Amy was sitting at a round table in the center of the room when the violence erupted at the table behind her. It wasn’t two men going at it. It was two women, and the fight was ugly from the start. They were kicking and clawing and pulling each other’s hair out, drawing blood and screaming loudly enough to be heard over the band.
The Divebomberz stopped playing as they always did when a fight broke out. The two women went down on the floor and disappeared under the table. When one man bent down to break up the fight, another man attacked him. The fight spread like wildfire. Soon, bikers were entering the fray. Jesse could see fists flailing in the air. In an instant, the club turned into a riot zone.
Jesse caught a glimpse of Amy putting her head on the table and trying to cover up with her hands. She was smack dab in the middle of the worst bar brawl he had ever seen.
Johnny vaulted over the main bar like a rodeo clown and did a quick draw on the cans of mace hanging on either side of his belt. His movement was so fluid he didn’t even lose his cowboy hat. Jesse watched in awe as Johnny bounced into the center of the fight in what seemed like slow motion and sprayed down the entire area with mace. Women were screaming. Men were shouting and cursing. Tables were overturning. Chairs were flying. Johnny kept spraying until the peppery mist became overwhelming. He alone seemed unaffected by the toxic cloud he was dispensing. People began choking and trying to get out of the contaminated zone as fast as they could.
Jesse threw his bass guitar down and fought his way through the panicking and fleeing people, trying to rescue Amy.
By the time he reached her, Amy was sitting alone at the table with her hands still over her head. Johnny had chased most of the crowd out the front door. Jesse grabbed her by the shoulders. She fought him off until she realized who he was. Jesse screamed at her. “Amy, Amy, we’ve got to get out of here.”
Amy raised her head off the table and gradually realized it was Jesse. “I can’t breathe. I can’t see. What’s going on?”
Jesse was choking up himself. “We’ve been maced. Let’s go.”
Dale was right by Jesse’s side. They scooped Amy up and whisked her back upstairs and into Johnny’s office. The rest of the band came up too. It didn’t take long to realize they couldn’t stay in the office. They were so covered with mace they had to open the window and walk down the fire escape to air out. By this time, Amy’s tears from the mace were mixed with sobbing from the violence she had been close enough to feel in her bones.
She tried to talk. “When you got me from the table. I could see the one girl’s legs still under the table. She only had one shoe on and her leg seemed to be twitching. Is she going to be all right?”
Jesse handed her a towel he had grabbed on the way out. “Yeah, she just got knocked out. She’s going to be fine.”
Amy tried to wipe of
f her face. “How do you know?”
Jesse looked at Dale. “You know, I don’t know. Let me go back in and check. Will you stay here with her, Dale? I’ll try to bring back some wet towels to get the mace off her.”
“Bring a bunch of towels,” Butch said. “We’re all contaminated.”
The band stayed with Amy while Jesse went back to the front door of the bar to check the damage. Mace hung in the air like poison gas in a trench of war. It hurt his eyes to even look in the door. He noticed the motorcycles had all vanished into the night. The Wheelers weren’t ones to hang around and wait for the police to make the scene.
Johnny was helping a woman to her car. The woman was holding one shoe in her hand and looking quite dazed.
“Is that the woman from under the table?” Jesse asked.
Johnny answered without looking up. “Yep, she’s going to be fine. Isn’t that right, dahlin’?”
The woman nodded and gulped deep breaths of fresh air as she bent down to put her shoe back on. Johnny had to steady her. “You shouldn’t be driving just yet. Tell you what. I’ll have somebody drive you home.”
“Did you call the police?” Jesse asked.
Johnny smiled politely. “Not unless someone gets killed. The only people I’ll call will be the cleaning company. I’ve got to get this place ready for tomorrow night.”
Jesse watched in amazement as Johnny arranged for the woman to be driven home in an old Ford pickup truck. The man actually cares, Jesse thought as he ducked into the bar to get an armful of towels.
He found Amy in the alley and walked her to the hotel in silence. Before entering the Royal Royce, she took off her clothes, including her bra and panties, and threw them in a trashcan. Jesse wrapped her in a big towel he’d found behind the bar, and took her up to the room.
Amy wouldn’t look at him. “I never want to smell those clothes again.”
Jesse hugged her close. “Chances are good you won’t.”
“You really know how to entertain a girl,” Amy said as they reached the room. “The bar fight, the mace, the antique elevator, the purple everything. It couldn’t be more heavenly.”
She got in the shower without making eye contact. Jesse thought she might not speak to him for the rest of the night. Then he heard her humming a little as she washed the mace out of her hair. He was listening right outside the bathroom door. She must have known he was there.
“Come on in. The water’s hot and wonderful.”
In that moment, Jesse realized, once again, how much he loved this woman. Deep down, she was tough and resilient. He remembered the day, many months earlier, when he decided to ask Amy to come live with him in New Orleans. He was talking to Casey about what seemed an impossible situation. Amy was in Indiana. Jesse had no money and no way to get to her. The band was living off the tip jar at Fritzel’s on Bourbon Street. He’d just spent his last five dollars on breakfast for him and Casey.
Jesse confided in his friend. “She won’t come down unless I ask her to marry me. And it’s got to be in person. The telephone won’t do. That’s what she said. I get the feeling she’s been talking to my mother.”
Casey contemplated the situation for a short time before responding. “You’ve got to get up there. I’ve got a little cash set aside. I’ll buy your plane ticket.”
“I can’t let you do that.”
“You can’t stop me from doing it,” Casey said. “I’ve heard you talking about this girl for too long now. In all the years we’ve been friends, I’ve never seen you like this over a woman.”
Jesse remembered getting down on one knee for Amy in the family kitchen in Indiana, in front of his mother and father and three sisters. Amy laughed and said “yes” when he proposed. She cried when he stood up to kiss her. He didn’t have a ring and she didn’t care. His mother served homemade carrot cake. His father took Jesse aside to say he approved of Amy. “I’m glad to see you marrying a good woman. You know, it might be a good time to think about going to law school.”
“Not now,” Jesse said to his father with no anger or even a sigh of exasperation. “I’m having way too much fun.”
All the details of the marriage proposal flashed through his mind as he got in the shower with Amy. He was ready to wash the mace out of his hair.
They stayed naked for the rest of the night. Neither one of them mentioned the terrible bar fight. Violence was the last thing they wanted to talk about … Love was busy conquering all. It was dawn when they fell into a blissful slumber in each other’s arms.
The next afternoon Amy drove back to New Orleans by herself. Jesse didn’t try to talk her out of it. He knew he had lost her support for the band’s never-ending road trip. Without Amy cheering him on, he wondered how much longer The Divebomberz could survive the hazardous duty of playing rowdy roadhouses.
“Amy left,” Jesse said to Butch as the two of them had lunch at a diner near Johnny’s.
Butch finished chewing and swallowed a bite of his burger. “Can you blame her? She could have been seriously hurt last night. It’s amazing she wasn’t. She was right in the middle of the worst fight I’ve ever seen. I’m surprised nobody got killed.”
“A couple people got hurt. Johnny never called the cops.”
Butch gestured toward Jesse with a French fry. “Johnny wouldn’t call the cops if he was surrounded by zombies.”
Jesse couldn’t resist. “He is surrounded by zombies every night.”
Butch had to agree. “Drunks, zombies, what’s the diff? I can’t believe we’re playing tonight. You’d think Johnny would take a day off after a riot like last night.”
“Not a chance,” Jesse said. “It’s Saturday night. He’ll raise the cover charge and double the drink prices. People will pay good money to return to the scene of chaos and mayhem.”
Saturday night started off slowly at Johnny’s Cimarron Club. Word had spread about the Friday night fight. Some folks thought the club would be shut down, but all the regulars knew Johnny’s would be open for business as usual. Johnny had a crew working most of the day to clean out the mace and the blood. They mopped the floors and walls and ceilings and tables and chairs. Giant fans and open doors kept the crew from succumbing to the fumes. They had the place smelling like a woman’s restroom by opening time.
Johnny hung a large banner under his front sign that said, “No Colors.” By 10 p.m., the club was packed as though nothing had happened the night before.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
DALLAS ALICE
Several weeks after the macing, Jesse and Butch were rudely awakened on a Monday morning by the Dallas police banging on the side of the van. It was not quite 7 a.m. when Jesse slid the side door open to see two officers pointing their pistols at his head.
He resisted the urge to slam the door shut in their faces. He had to think fast and be polite. “Good morning, officers. Did we do something wrong?”
“You’re parked in a residential neighborhood,” the older officer said. “We got a caller says you been here most of the night. People are afraid you might be one of them Charlie Manson types.”
Butch poked his head out from under a blanket, causing the two officers to point their weapons at him. He ducked back under the covers like blankets would protect him from bullets.
“Come on Butch,” Jesse said. “You can’t hide from the law. They can still see you.”
Butch uncovered himself and tried to regroup. “Is there any way I can get you to stop pointing those guns at me?”
The police realized there was no need for weapons and holstered their side arms quickly.
Jesse tried to explain. “We’re musicians on the road. Our band is The Divebomberz. We’re here to see Steven Mory, the attorney who represents bands. We didn’t want to pay for a hotel room. This street looked okay. We’re sorry if we scared anybody. We’ll get out of here right away.”
As Jesse spoke, he noticed and remembered they had an open bag of marijuana in plain view on the console between the two
front seats. How could they have been so stupid?
Butch realized the situation about the same time as Jesse. He started making small talk with the cops as a diversion. As long as they were looking at him in the side door, they wouldn’t look in the front seat to see illegal drugs lying all over the place.
“I hope we haven’t upset the neighbors too much,” Butch said. “Honest to God, we didn’t even think about that. We should have been more considerate. We were just looking for a safe place to crash.”
The two officers looked at each other. The younger officer held out his hands as if to say, “Maybe we should let them go.” The older officer looked at Butch and said, “Okay, I’ll tell you what. If you guys leave here right now, we’ll let you go. We won’t even give you a ticket.”
Butch reached out to shake the officers’ hands in thanks. That was all the cover Jesse needed.
“Thank you so much, officers,” Jesse said as he got behind the wheel. He swept the marijuana under the driver’s seat and put the key in the ignition with one fluid motion. Neither officer saw the sweeping move to hide the drugs. They were too busy shaking Butch’s hand.
The younger officer started waving goodbye. “You know, I’ve heard of you guys. You play Johnny’s in Shreveport every now and then, don’t you?”
Butch was surprised and flattered by a Dallas cop knowing about the band. “Why, yes we do. How do you know Johnny’s?”
“Believe it or not, one of my sisters works there.”
“What’s her name?” Jesse asked.
“Her name is Alice. She’s real cute, about five-eight, blonde, thirty-four years old.”
“We know Alice,” Butch and Jesse said together.
“She’s Johnny’s right hand girl,” Jesse said. “We love Alice.”
“Small world,” the older officer said as he started walking away.
The younger officer moved in closer. “Next time you see her. Say her little brother, Bobby, let you off the hook in Dallas.”
Jesse put the van in drive. “That will be our great pleasure.”
Butch said goodbye to the police as he slid the van door closed. Jesse drove away slowly, scarcely able to believe their good fortune. Butch said nothing until they were out of the neighborhood. “Smooth move on the marijuana.”
Rock and Roll Voodoo Page 29
