“I’m keeping a tight asshole on this,” Ray said, “and you know why.”
“Uh-huh,” Cal said.
“You, and only you.”
“Right,” Cal said. It was part of the strength and the solidity (and the stupidity, too, if truth be told) of the man that it didn’t even occur to him to say, “You can trust me, Ray.” Of course Ray could trust him. Otherwise, Cal wouldn’t have been permitted this little task.
“I don’t want any of those entertainment people,” Ray went on. “They’re no damn use to me on this thing.”
“Right,” Cal said. He kept watching that station wagon.
“And the tabloids, too,” Ray said. He’d thought long and hard about this, once the opportunity had come along. “The National Enquirer, the Weekly Galaxy, the Star—they can’t print a thing to do me any good.”
“They’re fun, though,” Cal said as the station wagon ahead turned off into the Roy Clark parking lot. Now they were behind a camper from Wisconsin. Intruder, the camper claimed was its brand name, and who could doubt it?
“Not this time,” Ray said. “Not even fun. And TV won’t do anything for me, either. I need print. The New York Times, maybe the Washington Post. Not USA Today.”
“Uh-uh.”
“A magazine’d be even better,” Ray said. “A serious one. Newsweek or Time. Not a monthly; they’d have me strapped in the death seat before the damn thing came out.”
“Weekly,” Cal said. He knew that much.
“Take your time,” Ray told him.
Looking surprised, Cal said, “Ray? I am takin my time, pokin along behind this camper here.”
“Finding the reporter,” Ray explained, with what only looked like patience. “We got a couple of weeks; we can wait and get just the right one.”
“Oh, sure,” Cal said. “I know what to do.”
Ray grinned at the earnest lumpy profile of his oldest friend. “I don’t know what I’d a done without you, Cal, over the years,” he said.
“Well, you didn’t have to, did you?” Cal said, making the right turn onto the precipitous parking lot around and behind the Ray Jones Country Theater.
This steeply sloped blacktop parking lot, not uncommon along this narrow ridge, gave the fast-fooded families and the sedentary retirees a little more heart exercise than they’d bargained for, but so far there was no objective evidence that the parking lot had actually killed anybody. And if there were any such evidence, Ray didn’t want to hear about it; he had trouble enough already.
Not including theater business. Forty-five minutes before showtime, and already his parking lot was half-full. All those polyester-wrapped tons of tourist lugged themselves upward toward the entrance at the front of the building, and those who recognized Ray Jones in what should have been the driver’s seat of the Jag, but was not, grinned and waved at him, offering him their silent solidarity—silent because his windows were firmly shut and the AC fully on. He grinned and waved back, friendly old Ray, showing them both hands and no steering wheel, and a lot of them peered more closely, realized it must be some kinda expensive foreign car with the steering wheel way over there, and grinned even bigger, happier than ever.
Country-music fans don’t envy or begrudge the material success of the performers, and that’s because they don’t see the country stars as being brilliant or innovative or otherwise exceptional people (which they are), but firmly believe the Willie Nelsons and Roy Clarks are shitkickers just like themselves, who happened to hit it lucky, and more power to them. It meant anybody could hit it lucky, including their own poor sorry selves, so these people, most of whom could lean down and rest their Coke cans on the poverty line, took sweet vicarious pleasure in the overt manifestations of their heroes’ lush rewards.
A reserved spot down at the back of the theater, a full eighteen feet below ground level at the front of the theater, was kept open for whichever car Ray chose to come to work in. (One of the great attractions of Branson for the country performers, who used to spend two to three hundred days a year on the road, is that they can now commute every day from home.) An exterior flight of stairs led from here up to the outside door to Ray’s dressing room; maybe not exactly the only dressing room in his career with a window but certainly the only one with a view: miles of Ozark mountains.
One of the other nice things about Branson for the country stars is how clean it is—no mobsters, no scuzzy high rollers from Detroit or Kuwait, no hard-eyed hookers. You didn’t have to go through life watching your back every damn minute. Mel Tillis once said Branson was a cross between Mayberry and Vegas, and that’s what he meant. When Andy Williams opened his Moon River Theater, his special guest was Henry Mancini, who happened to have written “Moon River,” and when Henry Mancini said onstage that Andy Williams had worked his ass off to get the theater ready on time, Andy Williams said to him, “We don’t use words like that in Branson.” To make the story better, he wasn’t kidding. To make the story better than that, he wasn’t wrong.
Waiting for Ray in his clean, well-lighted dressing room were musical director Lennie Elmore, already in his tux, plus Ray’s private secretary, Honey Franzen, a blonde in her mid-thirties who was still just as good-looking and almost as slender as she’d been a dozen years ago when she’d sung with the Jones Girls, the backup trio Ray used to have, which he’d given up when he’d moved to Branson. Branson doesn’t go for t&a, and why else have a girl trio backup? In any case, Honey Franzen, who was as smart as she was good-looking, had by then long switched from singing backup and waving it all around onstage behind Ray to being his private secretary and steady private comfort, the place where, when he had to go there, she had to let him in. She had, in fact, hired her Jones Girl replacement, and a few years later had fired the girl again, along with the other two final Jones Girls. That was just part of the sort of thing Honey took care of for Ray.
Tonight, though, it was Elmore who wanted a word with Ray first, saying, “The new reed guy’s come up with something.”
“Oh yeah?” Bob Golker, the former reed man—clarinet, some flute, various saxophones—a sideman with Ray for years, just as good drunk as sober, had taken a job in L.A., and his replacement was not accomplished in exactly the same ways; better flute, not quite so good sax, a jazzier sense of rhythm.
Elmore said, “He’s gonna do flute instead of clarinet behind Henny on ‘Orange Blossom.’”
“Is it okay?”
“They both like it. You listen tonight, see what you think.”
Ray shrugged acceptance. “Orange Blossom Special” was done solo on violin on virtually every stage in Branson, night after night; anybody who could enliven the damn thing had Ray Jones’s support.
Ray walked around the counter to the kitchenette part of the dressing room, opened a cupboard door, reached in, stopped, looked, and said, “There’s no Snickers in here. Goddamn, I took the last one yesterday. I meant to get some more; I forgot.”
Cal said, “I’ll get you some.”
“Thanks, Cal.”
Ray came around the counter again as Cal left the room via its interior door, to go upstairs through the theater to the concession stand out by the box office. Honey was over at the desk, looking at the computer, where the theater layout on the screen showed every seat sold. “Honey,” Ray said, “come on in back with me; I got a headache.”
“Sure, baby,” Honey said, and led the way back into the changing room while Lennie Elmore left to tell the new reed man the change was okay.
8
The map of Branson in Sara’s hotel room indicated all the attractions—that’s what they called them—along the Strip, and when Sara picked out the Ray Jones Theater, it looked as though it must be very close to the Lodge of the Ozarks, separated from it only by Mickey Gilley’s theater. Wouldn’t it be faster to go there by foot than by internal-combustion engine?
It would. Sara, the only walker in sight, reached the theater at ten minutes to eight, to find the parking lot blocked by
a sawhorse bearing the sign PERFORMANCE SOLD OUT. She walked by it anyway and went inside to the lobby filled with theatergoers to see what her press card could do.
Nothing. The twangy little girl in the box office assured her that sold out actually meant sold out—no more seats available. The term house seats did not appear to be part of her vocabulary. Not only that, the girl informed her this evening’s performance had been sold out yesterday and that both of tomorrow’s were already sold out as of now. A seat was offered for the matinee day after tomorrow. “Maybe later,” Sara said.
“Be gone later,” the girl said complacently.
Maybe so. Still, Sara didn’t feel like planning her life that far ahead. Also, there had to be some way her press connection could be made to work for her. It was true she wanted to see Ray Jones at work, but it was also true that she wanted him to become aware of her presence in his peripheral vision, without her joining that hopeless line of media people who were trying and failing to get interviews. Long ago, she’d learned that the best way to approach celebrities was obliquely.
So she thanked the twangy girl for her advice, declined the matinee two days off, and turned away to leave. A man held the door open for her and she stepped outside and looked around, trying to decide what to do next.
“Miss?”
She turned, and it was the man who’d held the door for her. Fiftyish, he was baggily dressed and blockily built, with a worried-looking bony face. In one hand, he carried three candy bars. He said, “Excuse me, did I hear you say you were with some magazine?”
“I am, yes,” Sara said, wondering what this was about. Surely he wasn’t trying to pick her up.
He said, “I didn’t catch the name of it.”
“Trend,” Sara said, really doubting this fellow was one of Trend’s readers. Around them, other non-Trend readers straggled up the slope and into the theater.
He seemed to chew on the name for a few seconds, then said, “Weekly or monthly?”
“Weekly,” she said. Feeling obscurely compelled to explain further, she added, “We’re a New York-based service and cultural magazine. I’m here to cover the Ray Jones trial.”
“For your magazine. Trend.”
“Sure. I’m sorry, I don’t see what …” And she gestured, inviting him to do some explaining of his own.
Which he promptly did. “Oh yeah,” he said, “I oughta tell you who I am. I’m Cal Denny. I’m a friend of Ray’s. I’m kind of connected, uh, with, uh …” And he waggled the candy bars at the building beside them.
“Oh.”
“I heard you trying to get in.”
“Apparently, full is full.”
“We’re doin real good business,” he allowed.
Sara grinned. “God bless Belle Hardwick, eh?”
He looked startled, then abruptly grinned back, as though they now shared a dirty secret. “I guess you’re right,” he said. “You want to see the show?”
“In return for what?”
“Huh?” He wasn’t very quick, Cal Denny, but sooner or later he got there: “Oh!” he said, and blushed, actually blushed. “No, I just thought you’d … I heard you in there …”
“Thanks, then,” Sara said. “There’s room after all, huh?”
“Well, not really,” Cal Denny told her. “But there’s a seat in the back that’s only used two different times, by somebody in the show. You’d have to go stand by the lighting guy just those two times, and the rest you could sit down.”
“It’s a deal,” Sara said. Sticking out her hand, she said, “Sara Joslyn.”
“Hi, there,” he answered, and awkwardly shook her hand, as though not used to physical contact with a woman. Soon he let go of her hand and led her back into the theater, where they joined the shuffling throng crossing the lobby to the two interior entrances. Cal Denny led them to the doorway on the left, where what looked to be a high school boy, in a thin pink blazer too big for him, stood collecting tickets. Denny murmured a word to the boy, pointing his thumb over his shoulder at Sara, and the boy nodded and waved her on in.
Inside was a theater like any other; longer than wide, the floor sloping down toward the front, rows of red plush seating parted by two carpeted aisles, a dark red curtain closed over the stage. At the rear, a platform displaced most of the last two rows of the center section, and on it, inside a simple two-by-four railing, hulked a fairly complex-looking light board in the care of a fat man in a Yosemite Sam T-shirt and Yosemite Sam beard. This was the lighting guy.
Denny in a half whisper introduced Sara—“This lady’s a reporter. She’ll be in the Elvis seat; let her know when she has to get out of it”—and Yosemite Sam nodded hello and agreement. Then Denny showed her the Elvis seat, on the aisle next to the lighting platform, and bent down to murmur, “I gotta bring Ray his Snickers now,” showing her the candy bars.
“Oh. Right.”
He went away, and Sara watched the people come in: families, many many families; children of all ages, most of them not overweight; adults of all ages, most of them overweight—rural people, small-town people, working-class people. These are the faces in the crowd when a farm is auctioned off for back taxes. They filed in, well-behaved, cheerful, carrying soft drinks and popcorn and candy as though they were going to the movies. They found their seats and organized themselves and faced the curtain, and it opened.
Houselights down. The six people on the simple stage, formally dressed and armed with musical instruments, began to play and sing country music, none of which Sara had ever heard before. Two of them were women, slender and pretty, with important hair, both dressed in glittery tight black gowns that covered them from neck to toe and enclosed their arms to below the elbow. They played guitars. The four men wore slightly odd tuxedos; one of them played piano, one drums, one an electric bass, and one a bewildering variety of wind instruments, all lined up on a chrome rack beside him.
Which of these was Ray Jones? Sara had expected more of an impressive introduction. Was it Ray Jones’s conceit to present himself as no more than a simple sideman who’d made good?
No. None of these people was Ray Jones, which became clear at the end of the first number, when the male guitarist introduced his co-musicians and himself and then engaged in some simple comedy routines with the others before dropping into another song, this one showcasing the talents of the pianist and the singing quality of one of the girl guitarists.
So this was the warm-up act. The audience seemed content with it, laughing at the old jokes and applauding the displays of musicianship. Sara sat and waited for Ray Jones.
Tap tap, on her shoulder. It was Yosemite Sam, beckoning her to join him on his platform. She did, and he gestured for her to squeeze herself flat against the rear wall. She did that, too, while onstage another musical number loped along like horses on a bridle path, and into the seat she’d just vacated slipped Elvis Presley, complete with all the black hair and a glittery shiny white suit with gold and glass beads all over it. Onstage, the song came to an end, the audience applauded, and the lighting man swung a big spotlight hard around and switched it on just as Elvis erupted out of his seat, shouting and hollering and waving his arms over his head. Sara, against the wall, was just out of the harsh beam of white light.
The audience laughed and called out with surprise, and with the spotlight tracking him, Elvis went tearing down the aisle and up onstage, still hollering gibberish, until the male guitarist, who doubled as MC, calmed him down, and then they did the joke, which was that Elvis wanted to announce he’d just seen Glenn Miller alive in a nearby supermarket.
Glenn Miller? Did these people know who Glenn Miller was?
Apparently. They laughed and applauded this small joke and then the MC asked Elvis to sing a song as long as he was there, but Elvis said he had to rush back to the supermarket to see if Glenn Miller was still there. He ran offstage and the audience laughed and applauded some more. Yosemite Sam gestured that Sara could resume her seat, which she did, and the s
how went on.
A little later, the warm-up act finished, the curtain closed, and a loudspeaker voice announced, “Ladies and gentlemen—Ray Jones!”
A somewhat bulky fiftyish man in a dark blue tux, under what might be his own mussy black hair but was probably a really good rug, and carrying an acoustic guitar so adorned with bright colors and wild designs that it looked like somebody’s favorite motorcycle, came out through the center split in the red curtain and stepped over to the microphone left there by the MC. A spotlight shone on him, and the applause was long and loud and truly enthusiastic. When it died down, the man sang, in his gravelly, well-traveled voice, a sappy air called “It’s Time to Write Another Love Song (This Time, the Song’s for You).”
More applause at the end of this song and then the curtain reopened, and there were the musicians again, with more instruments than before. Ray Jones said a few words of welcome to the audience, thanking them for coming, asking them if they didn’t think this was a really terrific bunch of musicians up here (they did), making a couple of small jokes about Branson traffic and the well-known desire of all fathers everywhere to go fishing instead of to the theater, and generally making himself accommodating to the crowd. He said nothing about murder trials or tax problems or anything troublesome.
Then he strummed a chord on his guitar and said, “Now, folks, I’d like some help on this one, if you feel up to it. I think you know the words I mean, where I want you to come right in and join me. If you could do that, we could really get something going here, I’m pretty sure. And—”
The musicians started a lively, fast-paced introduction, which the audience clearly recognized; there was laughter and applause and a stirring in the seats. Then Ray Jones leaned in to the microphone and sang:
A lot of stuff I tried, that people said was good,
But, dang, you know, they lied, or I misunderstood;
I may he countrified, but here’s my attitude …
Ray Jones lifted his head and shouted over the music, “That’s your cue!”
Baby, Would I Lie? Page 4
