The Vinyl Underground

by Rob Rufus

  “Shit,” I groaned, “I thought we were meeting at the stairwell—”

  He grabbed my hand and pulled me up.

  “One of the bats is missing,” he whispered, panicked.

  “What? How’s that possible?”

  “I dunno, I dunno, but the bat in the side-stage door is gone, man. It’s fuckin’ gone!”

  “Uh, we, uh, Milo! He has the keys! We need to find him and lock the door!”

  Suddenly, a wave of applause swelled from the auditorium. Lewis and I froze. The crowning ceremony had begun.

  “There’s no time, Ronnie. You go find Milo, and you play that record!”

  “But what about the door,” I yelped, totally unnerved.

  “I’ve got the door,” he said.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  He slid off his jacket, puffed out his chest, and rolled his shoulders.

  “What do ya think it means? I’m the best barricade in six counties. I can hold the doors shut myself. If anyone asks later, I’ll say I was trying to push ʼem open.”

  “But your ears,” I said, grabbing as much of his bicep as I could. “You already have a deferral! You don’t need to risk your sports career, you don’t have to—”

  “I know I don’t have to.”

  He gripped my trembling arm right back.

  “So don’t,” I persisted. “If we hurry, we can find another way.”

  “You know,” he said, “whenever me and Bruce played against a school we couldn’t beat, your brother would call a special play. The coach didn’t know about it, the guys on the team didn’t either. It was just between us. When a game was hopeless, he’d slap me on the back and say Bubba, it’s time for the Big Fuck You.

  “Then the two of us would walk onto that field and cause as much damage as possible. Maybe we couldn’t change the scoreboard, but we could put a wrecking ball through it. It feels like that’s what we’re doing now, like your brother called this play long before we stood here. This is all him, Ronnie. Bad Bruce lives.”

  He smiled his championship smile and his eyes lit up like two gold rings.

  “Bad Bruce lives,” I echoed.

  Then I watched in awe as he charged into the auditorium.

  He pulled the heavy doors shut behind him. I stood there a moment, totally blanking on what I needed to do . . .

  Milo! Shit!

  I sprinted to the stairwell in a mad dash. My legs and throat and heart began to burn, but I kept going. I tripped more than once as I lunged up the stairs, but I didn’t slow down until I flew through the doors of the second-floor hallway.

  I gasped for air, regaining my bearings. That way, I remembered, and ran.

  I’d never pushed myself like that before, and never would again. So much was happening so fast; I couldn’t catch up, no matter how I punished my muscles. But I had to try. I had to try. I had to try.

  So I fought forward until my legs began screaming.

  My heart pounded, pounded, pounded, pounded, pounded—

  Stopped.

  The sight of the baseball bat caused my heart to stop.

  “You better tell me right now, you commie fuck!”

  Stink’s words coated the walls of my skull, refusing to be fully processed. I couldn’t focus on anything but how scared Milo looked trapped against the wall.

  It took me a moment to realize I was standing still.

  “You know I’ll do it,” Stink screamed at Milo, “so tell me what you’re up to before I break your other arm! Before I bash your fuckin’ brains in—”

  Stink swung the bat.

  I flinched—the shock of the swing slapped me out of my daze.

  Stink must have seen Milo setting up his camera. He must have found the bat barricading the door. He must have followed him up the elevator—

  Stink swung again. He missed again.

  Milo crouched in a wrestling stance, dodging and darting frantically over what little ground he held. He was trying to lure Stink away from the balcony.

  My legs began moving forward.

  “This is your last chance,” Stink howled. “Ya think anyone cares what happens to you? They didn’t before—”

  He swung again and nearly landed a head shot, but Milo jumped back just in time. That’s when Milo saw me coming up from behind. I nodded at him and kept moving.

  “Ya think your mamma will mourn a traitor?” Stink yelled. “Ya think—”

  “You know what I think?” Milo suddenly said.

  His coolness threw Stink off guard. This was my chance.

  “I think it’s gonna be hilarious when you realize just how fucked you are. Because you’re right, I am up to something. But what you don’t know is—I’m pinning it all on you, you inbred afterbirth-looking Nazi bitch!”

  An animalistic scream clawed out of Stink’s throat. He hoisted the bat above his head like a sledgehammer.

  As he swung down, I lunged. I tackled him with a force that would have made Ramrod proud. The two of us went flying through the balcony doors headfirst. We tumbled to the aisle in what felt like slow motion. I glimpsed Hana standing at the record player, mortified by the sight of us. Then time sped up again, and we collapsed on top of each other.

  We grappled violently as we tumbled down the aisle. Punches compounded punches as we gained momentum, rolling, rolling, down and down—until my head smashed into the hard edge of the balcony.

  My vision went gray . . . then dark gray . . . then black . . . and then—

  Flash!

  Starlight. Sparkling starlight. Cardboard silver tinfoil starlight.

  I blinked myself back to a blurred plane of consciousness.

  I was lying against the edge of the balcony. Below me, the crowd clapped for Rachel Harris, who’d just been crowned prom queen of Cordelia High—but in my confused state, I was positive the cheers were meant for me.

  Ronn-ie! Ronn-ie! Ronn-ie! Ronn-ie!

  I pushed myself up onto my elbows. I was seeing quadruple.

  Ronn-ie! Ronn-ie! Ronn-ie! Ronn-ie!

  I reached for the guardrail, determined to give the crowd their money’s worth. Then Milo appeared outta nowhere and pulled me to my feet. As I wobbled for some sort of balance, my eyes managed to focus on Stink—he was on the other side of aisle, reaching for the fallen baseball bat.

  “Don’t let him get the bat!” I gasped.

  I spun Milo around by the shoulder.

  “Christ!” Milo said.

  Milo ran across the aisle fearlessly, and I followed as best as I could. We were locked on Stink like a torpedo, with no plan of attack beyond charge. But he reached the bat before we reached striking distance, and he came at us swinging.

  Milo and I backpedaled, bobbing and weaving defensively as Stink swung for a kill shot. He was desperate to draw blood, to win whatever private war he was waging. The tip of the bat got closer with every mad swing and clumsy step.

  Right before we reached the center aisle, he connected.

  The Louisville Slugger crashed against the top of Milo’s cast. Milo cried out and fell backwards, knocking me down with him. I tried to get to my feet, but he was dead weight on top of me. We were stuck on the floor, between the bleacher and the balcony.

  Stink looked down at us. He caressed the bat. His lips curled into a poison smirk. The veins in his neck bulged. He tightened his grip.

  He raised the bat into the sky, paused for a moment, and then swung it straight for Milo’s skull at a thousand miles per hour.

  “No, mudderfucker!”

  All of a sudden, the loudspeaker slid off of the bleacher and crashed down, knocking him over like a bowling pin. The bat flew from his hand as the enormous speaker pinned him against the balcony railing.

  My mouth dropped open at its hinges.

  I looked up at
Stink—he wore the same expression.

  I twisted and turned, trying to make sense of what happened.

  Then I saw Hana in the second row, holding an unhooked bicycle chain.

  Milo crawled off of me, and we somehow stumbled to our feet. When I reached the center aisle, I looked back at Stink—he was foaming at the mouth like a rabid weasel, struggling to get free.

  “Come on, you chickenshits,” he spat through bloodstained lips. “Get this thing, get this thing off me. Fucking hippies . . . Gook-chink whore. You can’t do this you, you, you can’t do this, goddammit!”

  “You’re in The Vinyl Underground,” I said, “we do what we want here, man.”

  An abrupt round of applause rose from the crowd.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the DJ announced, “please circle the floor as your king and queen have their first slow dance of the evening.”

  Milo ran to the turntable. But I stayed there, looking at Stink. His face was inches from the speaker grating. I glanced out at the crowd—I saw all of Stink’s friends loitering near the back. I even saw Sergeant Adams, standing with the other chaperones. As the spotlight centered on the freshly minted royalty, Hana came to my side.

  She pointed at the exit nearest the stage—Lewis stood there like a landmark, waiting to push against a flood of boys who’d no longer have to navigate the government implemented rite of passage commonly known as death.

  Lewis looked up at us.

  He shot his fist into the air like a totem of defiance.

  Then he turned back to the doors.

  “Here we go,” Milo said.

  I closed my eyes and smiled.

  Milo dropped the needle onto the record. The crackle of the speaker was loud enough to make Stink scream. Hana turned and knelt beside him.

  “You know,” she whispered, “you made me so afraid—afraid of you, afraid that everyone’s like you—God, what a joke. Now I see how fuckin’ wrong I was to be afraid. You were already trapped, weren’t you? You’ve always been trapped. You’re just another sheep chained up in a prison of your own hate.”

  The needle found the groove.

  “I hope, in a way, that this breaks your cage.”

  Then a voice boomed through the atmosphere like a thunderstorm. Screams of shock rose from the audience as the noise blasted from the hidden wall of speakers, distorted and insane and impossibly loud. Everyone in the crowd must have thought it was God himself.

  Commanding them.

  Demanding them.

  To:

  KICK OUT

  THE JAMS

  MOTHER

  FUCKERS

  Hana grabbed my hand and dragged me up the balcony.

  Milo ran ahead of us. He pushed into the hall just as the drums began beating. Then a buzz saw guitar blew right through existence itself—

  YEEEEAH

  I... I...I...

  WANNA

  KICK 'EM

  OUT

  We made it into the hallway just as the song began.

  I don’t know if I was laughing or crying as we ran toward the stairwell at the other end of the school. All I know is that it felt like a victory lap, not an escape. All I know is that Hana’s hand held mine, pulling me forward as she always did.

  I felt zero trepidation, only a hyperawareness of my own existence. We pushed into the stairwell, and descended the stairs like a pack of hyenas, laughing madly as we sprang toward the waiting world. The music shook the outer doors of the building as we pushed them open. We ran into the schoolyard panting desperately, cackling gloriously.

  “Holy shit,” Milo wheezed, “we did it! Oh, man! We really—”

  Then the three huge windows of the auditorium exploded. Our jaws dropped open in disbelief as shards of glass and rock-n-roll cut through the fragile night.

  twenty-three

  Last Chance to Dance

  (From the Cordelia Island Register, Sunday May 25th, 1968)

  Fourteen Hospitalized After

  Senior Prom Prank Disaster

  Fourteen people were transported to Liberty General Hospital on Saturday night after being exposed to dangerous levels of noise during the Cordelia High School senior prom.

  The event took place in the Cordelia High School auditorium around 10:30 p.m. on Saturday night, said Fire Chief David Tweel. It is suspected to be the result of a prank gone horribly wrong.

  As Cordelia High seniors Benji Curtis, 18, and Rachel Harris, 17, were being crowned king and queen of the prom court, a prankster allegedly barred the doors of the auditorium shut.

  Once auditorium exits were blocked, a profane transmission was broadcast into the dancehall at a deafening volume, Tweel said.

  “I’ve never heard anything like it,” Shannon Chaney, 17, said. “The noise was loud, like a bomb. I saw a couple kids’ ears start bleeding. No one could get out of the room, and everybody started to panic.”

  The sound was broadcast at a volume well past the threshold of danger. The frequency of the sound waves then shattered the three large windows of the auditorium, Tweel said.

  “It was just crazy,” Teacher David Corona, 46, said. “There was a lot of confusion. I and the other chaperones were trying to get the children to cover their ears, when bam! The windows exploded. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  The adult chaperones led the students to safety through the broken windows. At that time, the occurrence was thought to be the result of an audio system malfunction. It wasn’t until authorities arrived that it became clear it was intentional.

  “Once we got on scene, it became apparent there was more to it,” said Sheriff Francis J. Milton. A carjacking had been reported earlier in the evening, and the vehicle had been transporting a large amount of audio speaker equipment.

  Upon an initial sweep of the scene, the stolen speaker equipment was found arranged around the auditorium in a pattern designed to create the dangerous sound that damaged the ears of everyone in the room, Sheriff Milton said.

  The suspect, who is a student at Cordelia High, was found unconscious on the second-floor balcony. Police transported him to Liberty General Hospital for emergency medical treatment.

  “It looks like a senior prank that got out of hand,” Sheriff Milton said. “You know, play music real loud, scare the bejabbers out of everyone? The irony is, our suspect ended up the butt of his own joke. My men found him trapped beneath one of the speakers. Lord, he may as well have stuck his head inside of that thing.”

  Thirteen others were transported to Liberty General Hospital for injuries related to the incident, including hearing loss and dizziness. Seven were treated for wounds suffered from shattered glass. Dozens of other students were treated for injuries on-scene.

  “We’ve had some pretty out-there senior pranks in the past,” said Cordelia High School Principal Emmett Yonker, “like when the girls’ volleyball squad snuck a pig into the boys’ locker room in ’66. But I’ve never seen anything on this scale. What conspired tonight is troubling, extremely troubling.”

  “The damage to the ears of our students and faculty, as well as the building itself, will take time to properly assess,” said Principal Yonker.

  Classes at Cordelia High resume Monday morning, per usual. The auditorium will be closed for the foreseeable future.

  The investigation is still underway. The suspect’s condition has been described as serious but stable. Charges are pending.

  “People are saying that noise we heard was music, but I don’t believe it,” said Tracy Sullivan, 17. “It sounded like, I don’t know, craziness. It sounded, for a second, like we were in hell.”

  I kept my eyes on the newspaper. Dad sipped his coffee and stared at me across the breakfast table. Momma was on her knees, knotting Roy’s tie. Everyone but me had their church getup on—I’d been given a rare defer
ral so I could work on my term paper.

  I regretted coming downstairs at all. My head throbbed something awful. I ran my index finger down the page slowly, pretending to read the article as my thoughts drifted back to the scene of the crime.

  The windows of the auditorium shatter. The three of us run into the alley across the street. We hunker behind some trash cans and watch our dazed classmates climb from the windows. I have a unique understanding of how disoriented they feel, unable to catch their balance because their equilibrium has been thrown off.

  A girl in a pink dress trips as she reaches the terrace; she shrieks in pain as broken glass cushions her fall. I wince at the sight, but don’t comment. Neither do Milo or Hana. Lewis still hasn’t come out.

  Soon, sirens approach. Two cruisers squeal to a dramatic stop in front of the school. A fire truck arrives moments later, and then an ambulance. The red emergency sirens clash with the blue lights of the auditorium, mixing in the yard in a purple sort of haze.

  It is through this haze that Lewis finally emerges, stumbling out of the now-open emergency exit. Even at a distance, it’s clear he is in pain. But when an EMT approaches him, Ramrod waves him away. He stumbles from group to group, checking on others. We watch until Joe-Joe Brown offers him a lift home. Once Ramrod climbs into Joe-Joe’s Bonneville, we feel safe enough to talk.

  Well, Milo talks. Hana and I are too discombobulated. My head is aching, and my mind is broken. Hana makes me take off my jacket. She uses it to soak up the blood running down my forehead from an unseen wound.

  But Milo is unfazed. The emergency lights flash orbs of color onto his glasses. He watches the aftermath as if a secret dream has been fully realized. He explains that he isn’t basking in the pandemonium, but in the damage he’s done to Stink. He walks us through it, step by step, as chaos reigns in the street.

  He spent weeks setting up the frame. He called the sheriff continuously, and claimed Stink was still tormenting him. Sheriff Milton never took action, but Milo never expected him to. All he wanted to do is provide a consistent narrative.

  Milo called the sheriff earlier in the evening to administer one final report—he claimed Stink attacked him in the Royal Atlantis parking lot as he was taking the speakers to be repaired, and then stole the work van to add insult to injury. Now that a local business was involved, Sheriff Milton was forced to take his claim seriously.