The Hour of the Innocents

by Robert Paston

  “Don’t get smart with me. You know what the problem was.”

  I had no idea.

  “Do you know how fast you were going?”

  “Just under the speed limit.”

  “Go ahead. See what being a smart-ass gets you. I clocked you going ninety-four miles an hour.”

  I caught myself on the verge of saying that the Corvair wouldn’t do eighty going downhill. He knew that. This was his way of getting back at Matty. I knew that. I would’ve liked to ask him what it felt like when his nephew coldcocked him. But he had all the power and I had none.

  “I thought I was going under the speed limit,” I said. As respectfully as I could.

  “You think the limit’s a hundred miles an hour?” He drew out his ticket pad. “You’re going to lose your license for this. For six months.”

  “Officer, I—”

  “You don’t want to talk back to me. When I’m letting you off easy. After you ran a red light back in St. Clair. And passed illegally.”

  “No, Officer. I don’t want to talk back to you.”

  He snorted and wrote. “You won’t hear nothing until the spring. Docket’s always backed up. But don’t think you been forgotten, when you don’t hear for a while. We don’t forget. You’re going to get to walk on your own two legs for a while. So you can learn to obey the traffic laws.” He cocked his head and smiled down at me. “I wonder if I should check your car for drugs?”

  He didn’t. He just tore off the ticket and handed it to me. “It’s your lucky day, Mr. Cross. You could’ve lost your license for an entire year. I’m giving you a break. You drive carefully from now on.”

  * * *

  Things got worse. So much worse that I didn’t say a word about the ticket to Matty or anyone else. I decided I’d talk to my mother’s lawyer about it. I didn’t like him, but he could tell me how much it would cost to get the citation pulled. He’d couch the number in terms of legal fees, but just about anything short of murder in front of a mass audience could be fixed in the county. I just wasn’t sure if I would have the money.

  We hadn’t even finished setting up our gear on the stage when we learned the reason Frankie booked the gig. Darlene, the go-go Cleopatra last seen at the Greek’s in Shamokin, was dancing at the Rocktop all that week. She looked even harder, meaner, and sexier than before, all taut wires under hard-rubber flesh.

  “You sonofabitch,” Stosh said to Frankie. “You shit-eating sonofabitch.”

  “Hey,” Frankie said. To Stosh and to all of us. “I had no idea she’d be here.”

  I thought Matty was going to knock him down. Instead, Matty took his guitar to his motel room across the parking lot. We didn’t see him again until it was almost time for our first number.

  Our performance that evening wasn’t our best. Frankie, whose first private encounter with Darlene may not have been all that he’d hoped, toned down his sex-show antics. He still seemed better suited to the old Famous Flames, though. Or to some scuzzy lounge at the Jersey shore. The rest of us kept it professional, but there were few hints of the group that had electrified the crowd at Lancelot’s Lair—or even of the band that had the frat boys freaking out down at Lehigh.

  Frankie and Darlene disappeared during the first break, but not the second. Stosh smirked and remarked, “She’s probably more than even Frankie can handle.”

  The owner, whom nobody liked, was content, though. The band played its sets, took requests, and kept the dancers happy. We could have been any one of over a dozen groups on the circuit.

  We had an agreement that we could rehearse in the afternoons while the club was closed, but Frankie didn’t show up for the first session. It reignited the anger everyone felt. Even Joey, who cultivated a laid-back image behind the sound board, clearly had the ass. Pete, his sidekick, sat there shaking his head, taking off his wire-rim glasses, and putting them back on again. Frankie had broken a trust: You didn’t blow off a rehearsal.

  We needed to work, too. Things were coming together so well for us, moving so fast, that we had to prepare to cut a demo tape to peddle to record companies. There was no block of open time in our schedule until after New Year’s, but we all had agreed to book studio time in January. The first step was just to hear ourselves on tape and find out what didn’t work. Live performances could thrill a crowd, while the same band or song might not transfer well to an album. We were confident, though. Our only disagreement lay in the choice of studios. Matty and I were all for booking a Philly studio with full-time engineers and a track record, but Stosh and Frankie wanted to save money by going with an evenings-only studio in Reading the first time out.

  After discarding some of my older stuff, we had fourteen solid original songs, which the others felt would be plenty. But I was determined to get us up to eighteen or even twenty originals. I wanted us to have a choice of what went on an eventual album, with no filler songs. Too many groups had gotten one big chance, only to blow it. Everything I’d read about the business led me to believe that at least one song out of three would flop when the tape started rolling. I was determined to get it right. Matty was my ally.

  Without Frankie, there were limits to what we could rehearse. If anything, his absence highlighted his indispensability. He wasn’t only an incandescent front man, he was a rock-solid bass player whose years of working with Stosh had given the two of them a connection just short of telepathy.

  But Frankie was off with Darlene the Devil, his little carnivore with her too-white teeth and black-lacquer helmet of hair. I had hoped we could start work on an arrangement of the song I’d just written for Laura—I wanted to surprise her—but it needed Frankie, with his tenor switch turned on. The number had a sweeping melody line set to powerful, chiming chord changes. A blend of ballad and rave up, it was different from anything I’d written before … or from anything I’d ever heard.

  And it truly was for Laura, although I wasn’t certain she’d get it until I told her so. Songwriting is a form of conjuring, and her name wasn’t one of the magic words. Unless it was inserted in the body of a line, as in the old tears-for-teens song “Tell Laura I Love Her,” the name didn’t sing well. It couldn’t open a line strongly and couldn’t close one at all. So, although the song expressed my feelings for Laura, the name of the woman in the lyrics was Carlotta.

  That afternoon session clearly wasn’t the right time to introduce a new song, though. Stosh was so furious at Frankie, so harsh in his criticism, that Matty finally told him, “Forget it. Let it go. Unless you want the band to fold. There’s nothing any of us can do about it now.”

  Thursday night, we plodded through three more sets.

  On Friday, I tried to talk to Frankie. No one else would. On a break from his adventures with Darlene, he joined me for a lunchtime ride down the mountain to a diner off the main road. I missed Laura and worried about her now. I would have driven back to see her the previous afternoon, had I known the rehearsal would come to nothing. But I kept my resentment in check. I didn’t want the group to come apart, and the current problem had multiple angles to it.

  Frankie’s table manners were as bad as his teeth. When he got to his second cheeseburger, I decided to do my guidance counselor best.

  “You know, Frankie … if Angela decides to drive up here one of these nights, it’s not going to take her fifteen seconds to figure out what’s going on.”

  With beef-and-bread mush filling his mouth, he told me, “Don’t worry about Angela. She hates this place. She won’t come near it.”

  “Or if any of her friends show up.”

  “They hate it, too.”

  “Come on, man. Darlene’s trouble from ground zero. You have to see that.”

  “Well, if she is, she’s the kind of trouble I like. Hey, give me a break, huh? I can still see that Joan bitch riding up and down on your dick. Tell me you weren’t having a good time.”

  “That was different. I made a mistake.”

  “Well, you sure looked like you were enjoying
your mistake. Man, she looked hot. Maybe you should make mistakes more often?” He laughed, then put on his know-it-all smile. “I’ll bet you get tired of that brainy pussy all the time, just yak-yakking away. Know what I think? I think you really like them dumb and dirty.” He laughed again. “Takes one to know one, don’t it, Bark?”

  “I asked you to knock off calling me ‘Bark.’”

  He grinned. You weren’t going to see those teeth on an album cover. Not even if they were brushed. “Okay. ‘Wilbur.’”

  “It’s not ‘Wilbur.’ And you know it. It’s ‘William.’ ‘Will’ to my friends. If you’d like to try being one.”

  He went into a Mr. Ed imitation: “‘Wil-l-l-l-bur-r-r-r.’”

  The waitress, who did not appear to be a happy woman, glanced toward us: two assholes who looked as if they’d stiff her on the tip. Beyond the plate-glass window, snow flurries teased the gray landscape.

  “Look, Frankie … just last week you were telling me how much you love Angela.”

  “That was last week,” he said, taking another bite of cheeseburger.

  * * *

  The flurries turned into the first snow of the season, early and unwelcome. By the time darkness fell, the roads were bad. I wasn’t surprised at how empty the club remained, but that anyone showed up at all. We played to a dozen people at four or five tables, with a few regulars at the bar slobbering over Darlene.

  She seemed to have cooled on Frankie, who had shown up on time for the Friday afternoon rehearsal. He still faded into the darkness with her after the last set, though. The rest of us sat around in the room Joey shared with Pete, drinking Wild Turkey and messing around on unamplified guitars with Johnny Carson mugging in the background. We let Pete sit in on harmonica. He was teaching himself to play blues harp and not making great progress. I didn’t mind him jamming with us after hours, though. His desire to play music was so earnest that I felt sorry for him. Perhaps I recognized a cosmic connection. Matty didn’t seem to mind, either. He just played right past him.

  I had always blown off Pete in the past, back when he trailed our band like a needy dog. Lately, though, I had registered him as a person. He didn’t ask for much, just to be around the band and do whatever odd jobs needed doing. Physically the smallest of us, he was always there to lift the heaviest speaker cabinets and amps. With his bushy mustache, wire-rims, and thin hair down over his shoulders, he looked like a caricature of a hippie weakling. But he worked tirelessly and he was easily our biggest fan. He knew every lyric by heart.

  Recently, we’d started giving Joey a cut of 12 percent. It didn’t begin to pay for the sound system or the van. Joey passed most of it on to Pete. Everyone wanted to be around a band, to share in the power and the glory, hoping the radiance would rub off on close associates.

  Johnny and Doc gave way to Tyrone Power on The Late Late Show. Joey dozed off behind his thick black beard. The rest of us were too tired to play any pranks on him.

  Around two in the morning, we all perked up one last time. Stumbling outside, we had a snowball fight under a sky blown clear and star-burned. Then we went our separate ways to bed, feeling drunk and fraternal, facing a hungry morning until a plow made it up the mountain.

  A few rooms down from mine, Frankie and Darlene were having a fight.

  * * *

  By Saturday—our last night at the Rocktop—the road had been cleared and the room was packed. Word on the band had gotten out, and a number of under-twenty-one heads were turned away. The size of the crowd not only got us back into our all-conquering groove, but meant we were less likely to have an argument with Mario, the club’s owner, who loved to trot out excuses why he shouldn’t have to pay the amount specified in any given contract. It was clear that we were hot and he’d want us back. We didn’t intend to tell him that he was never going to see or hear us again once we got off his mountain.

  Frankie became a serious front man again. As far as Darlene was concerned, he was of less interest than a dead mouse in a neighbor’s basement. When she danced, she ignored all of us, playing to the barflies. On our breaks, Frankie flirted with a table of older women, the thirtyish kind who wore fake pearls, worked as secretaries, and screwed the boss. If he meant to make Darlene jealous, it didn’t work. She was just putting in the hours until she could go.

  I had never seen a woman who looked so vicious, in every sense of the word. If Frankie had been a fool, he’d also been brave.

  By the end of the night, we all were relieved that the episode was behind us. Mario paid up without quibbling, and Darlene disappeared, leaving Frankie behind with most of his body parts intact. No one intended to stay overnight, despite the free rooms. The road shone with patches of ice, thanks to the plummeting temperature, and the parking lot slush jumped over the tops of our shoes as we loaded our gear, but we were determined to make it home that night, even if it meant driving fifteen miles per hour. We had four vehicles for the six of us and planned to convoy, at least until we reached the interstate.

  Stosh and Pete were off fetching their bags from their rooms. Frankie and I stood in the cold behind my Corvair, wishing for coffee and watching as Joey and Matty checked that our gear had been loaded properly in the van. We had rearranged the packing plan to shift weight forward so the vehicle wouldn’t fishtail on an icy patch. Beside me, Frankie shivered and said, “If we ever make it big, I’m moving to Florida.”

  Near the front door of the club, a car backed out. Late boozers, I figured, glad they were headed down the hill ahead of us and not behind us.

  Instead of turning down the drive, the car, a dark Lincoln, circled the lot and stopped in front of us.

  Two men got out. The driver remained behind the wheel.

  “You. Romeo,” one of the men said to Frankie. “Get in the car.” He spoke with a hard Philly accent.

  “Fuck off,” Frankie told him. But his voice did not sound assured.

  Matty turned from the van. The man who had remained silent drew a gun, warning Matty off. The thugs knew what they were doing. They kept trouble at a safe distance.

  “Come on, Romeo,” the other man said, producing a small automatic of his own. “We just want to educate you a little. About the laws of personal property, which you don’t fucking understand.”

  Glancing over to be certain that Matty was safely at bay, the speaker strode over to Frankie, took his arm, and pressed the pistol’s muzzle against his temple.

  “We’re just going to have a talk. Nothing for anybody to worry about. Now get in the car.”

  “Don’t,” Matty commanded.

  The thug who had been silent spoke to Matty: “Move one more inch, and you’ll never move again.”

  “Don’t get in the car,” Matty said.

  “Shut your fucking trap,” the gunman holding Frankie told Matty. “Stay out of this. Unless you want your lady-killer pal to have an even worse time of it.”

  He jerked Frankie toward the Lincoln. Frankie went along, as slowly as his kidnapper would let him.

  Once he had Frankie on the floor behind the front seat, his captor got in, lowered the window, and trained his pistol on Matty. The thug who’d been covering Matty got in the far side, behind the driver.

  The car tore off.

  Red taillights disappeared behind black shrubs.

  “What are we going to do?” Joey asked.

  “Shut up,” Matty said. He didn’t move one muscle.

  I tried to get through to him: “We have to—”

  He twisted toward me. Furious. “Shut up! Listen!”

  In the mountaintop silence, the only sound was that of the Lincoln speeding down the hill.

  “Just listen,” Matty whispered.

  A few motel rooms down, Stosh emerged with his ancient suitcase.

  Matty held up his hand: Stop! Silence!

  The car descended forever. Forever was about three minutes. Then it stopped.

  Matty turned to Joey. “You have your pistol in the van? Tell me the truth.”
/>
  “Yeah.”

  “Give it to me. Move!”

  He turned to me. “You—drive. Do what I say the instant I say it.”

  Joey produced the revolver. Matty checked the cylinders.

  “Need more rounds?” Joey asked, already moving back toward the truck.

  “No,” Matty said.

  I got behind the wheel of the Corvair. It wasn’t going to catch the Lincoln in a car chase. But I grasped that Matty expected to find Frankie near the bottom of the mountain.

  Bewildered, Stosh asked what was going on.

  “Later,” Matty said.

  “It’s Frankie,” Joey told Stosh. “He’s in deep shit.”

  Compressing himself to squeeze into my car, Matty said, “The rest of you stay here. Until you hear the horn.”

  “Be careful, man,” Joey said. It sounded silly.

  “Turn off the headlights,” Matty snapped at me. “Just parking lights.”

  As soon as we cleared the lot and turned down the mountain, Matty told me to cut the engine and coast.

  “Your brakes all right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They noisy?”

  “I never noticed.”

  “Just watch the road. When I tell you to stop, you stop. And stay in the car. If you hear a shot, you drive off as fast as you can, whichever way the car’s pointing. And don’t stop. You won’t be able to help me, if there’s trouble.”

  “I couldn’t just—”

  “Shut up. Watch the road.” He rolled down his window and leaned toward the night. Listening.

  It was the most terrifying driving I’d ever done. We needed to gather speed to manage the intermittent upward grades. The tires sought out every patch of ice. Without the traction the drivetrain provided, steering was difficult. If I oversteered, I didn’t trust the guardrails to stop us from plunging into the trees.

  It seemed like a roller-coaster ride for the damned.

  “Turn on the engine,” Matty said abruptly. “Go!”

  “What—”

  “They’re moving again. Turn on your engine. Let’s go.”

  Firing up the ignition, I almost veered into the side of the mountain. But the engine pressed the tires to the road thereafter. I picked up speed.