Strange Girl (6 page)

“Any news on the Aja front?” I asked.

“Oh, I meant to tell you. Heard from Macy Barnes that she’d heard from Kathy Hawkins that Aja should be back in school on Monday, just not in Billard’s class.”

“Who the hell is Kathy Hawkins?”

“Our counselor’s nine-year-old daughter.”

“You couldn’t find a better source than that?”

“Kathy’s solid. Remember, it takes at least a decade of living to learn how to lie properly. Besides, Macy knows Kathy well—she’s her babysitter.” Janet paused. “Cheer up. You should be happy with the news.”

“I am, I just, I don’t know.” I paused to wipe the sweat off my brow. The camper had air-conditioning but I didn’t want to push the repair job we’d done on the radiator. I added, “I’d just like to know why Billard took such an immediate disliking to Aja.”

“Billard’s explosive. Aja didn’t sass her or anything like that?”

“Not even remotely. It makes no sense.”

“You’re thinking about what you saw. The two may have met before Monday morning.”

“I doubt it. Aja just moved here.”

“According to my sources she’s been here two months.”

“Really? Why’d she miss the first two weeks of school?”

“I don’t know why she decided to sign up at all.”

“We’re doing it again. We keep talking about my love life. What about yours?”

Janet shook her head. “Point to one guy in our town that I could take seriously and I’ll go out with him tomorrow night.”

I could think of several guys that might make a good match for Janet. But I knew if I brought them up she’d just start pointing out all their flaws.

I worried Janet was walling herself off. I wasn’t sure why. She was no knockout but she was cute enough. Her hair and eyes were brown, like mine. However, over the summer she’d taken the scissors to her hair and cut most of it away. Now she looked vaguely butch. It was almost as if she’d been trying to create an image, or sign, that said:
Stay Away
.

We reached the Roadhouse at six in the evening and immediately began to set up. A few non-servicemen were having a beer and a sandwich but the Ellsworth Air Force Base crowd wouldn’t begin to trickle in until later. Burrito Bill was happy to see us and offered us free dinner while we were in the middle of our sound check. Naturally we accepted—we were starved.

Yet we didn’t order any Mexican food, nor did anyone who came to the joint, not anymore. Burrito Bill had earned his nickname twenty years ago when he’d been married to his first wife—he was now on his third—who had supposedly made such fantastic burritos that a Pentagon general who’d come out to inspect the base prior to recommending its closure had changed his mind when he happened to stop at the Roadhouse and sampled the first wife’s cooking. He’d been so blown away he’d ordered the base kept open just so he’d have an excuse to visit three or four times a year and eat her burritos.

Everyone in the band assumed it was an urban legend until we spoke to half a dozen servicemen who’d actually been in the bar when the general had eaten there. The only real mystery, the soldiers told us, was why Burrito Bill had divorced the woman. Back then, they said, the Roadhouse had been the hottest joint in the state.

Now our band was called in to headline their biggest event.

I wondered what that said about the place. And us.

The agreement Janet had struck with Burrito Bill stated that we were to go on at nine and play until closing. But when nine rolled around the Roadhouse was only a quarter full. We stalled by pretending to tune our instruments. None of us liked to play to empty seats. Yet, as it got closer to ten, Bill got on Janet’s case and Janet got on ours and Dale suggested I start by playing solo.

“Are you nuts?” I snapped.

“Chill, Fred,” Mike said. “Just you and your acoustic guitar—it’ll work. Pretend you’re Bob Dylan playing in an old coffeehouse in New York City. Later, when the herd shows, the rest of us can quietly slip onstage and turn up the volume and blow out their brains.”

“The early birds are probably here because of you,” Janet said.

“I don’t like it,” I grumbled, although it was a fact I often played solo at some point during a show. It was just that I liked to warm up with Mike’s thundering drums and Shelly’s classic keyboard at my back. Simply having Dale standing by my side with his bass gave me confidence.

I continued to protest but the band, and Bill, gave me no choice. In the end I sat on a stool at the far end of the Roadhouse, the long bar on my left, the bulk of the seats and tables in front of me. I strummed a few chords on an acoustic guitar I’d bought for a hundred bucks when I was twelve. I’d practically worn a hole in the wood beneath the bottom string. The guitar was like an old friend; I’d learned all I knew about music on it.

I wasn’t sure what to play but finally settled on an old Neil Young song, “Heart of Gold.” I’d always looked up to Neil. His songs were mostly simple, chord-wise, but his lyrics carried powerful emotions: pain, loss, desperate hope. It didn’t bother me that I hadn’t even been born when he’d written his most famous hits. Great songs were like fine wines—they aged gracefully.

My voice . . . God, I honestly didn’t know if I could sing or not. Most people said I was gifted, that I hit every note and had a lot of feeling. But I only truly felt my potential when I sang alone—all alone, in my bedroom when the house was empty. When I was in front of a crowd, big or small, I had to hear the cheers before I could relax.

Yet I was fortunate that night because the older servicemen had come into the Roadhouse early and Neil Young had been a part of their youth and they clapped loudly when I finished my first song. That made me feel good. My heart stopped pounding and I ceased dripping sweat over the guitar’s frets. I decided to play another song from the same era, Cat Stevens’s “Wild World.” The first two lines made me think of Aja.

“Now that I’ve lost everything to you, you say you want to start something new. And it’s breaking my heart you’re leaving . . .”

I sang alone for half an hour, until ten thirty, when suddenly the dam burst and two hundred men and women in uniform poured in. Bill signaled that he wanted me to take a break while he and his help filled drink orders. By then the others had joined me onstage and were tuning their instruments—for real this time.

The crowd was loud and boisterous. Janet had been right. From the gossip we could tell that most of them were shipping out to the Middle East tomorrow. They were a mob with a lot on their minds and we knew we had to meet their energy with our own.

There’re two questions rock bands often ask each other when they meet backstage at a gig. The first is, “Are you a Rolling Stones or a Beatles fan?”

If you answer “Rolling Stones” you don’t have to say another word. But if you say “the Beatles” you’re invariably asked question number two: “Are you a Paul or John fan?” Right then, if you don’t say John, you’re labeled a wuss.

Why? Everyone knows that Paul was a genius but if you’re going to play finger-bleeding rock and roll then you’ve got to have an edge and every musician knows John was the one Beatle who took the real creative risks.

Tonight I just wished I could channel John Lennon’s spirit. Hell, I’d even take Paul.

We started with a classic, Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Except for backup vocals, Shelly didn’t play on the song. I was a big fan of Kurt Cobain and our voices were similar. He was a songwriting genius, in my opinion. I loved how on the chorus of “Teen Spirit” he repeated “Hello, hello, hello,” again and again, until it changed into “How low?” A simple transformation but powerful. That was the direction I wanted my own lyrics to take.

The audience went nuts, yelling and dancing. I could see Burrito Bill in the back, with Janet, his big gut swaying with the music. He was happy. The more the crowd moved and screamed the more thirsty they got and the more they drank. I signaled to the others that we should pound hard for an hour before we eased up and let our guests attack the bar.

The first set couldn’t have gone better. When we finally did take a break, Burrito Bill called us over to help deliver pitchers of beer. That wasn’t part of the deal but everyone was in a good mood so we said what the hell and played the part of being waiters for a spell. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and you had to yell to be heard. As usual, Mike drank more beer than he delivered and his stride began to sway.

At 11:20 we got back onstage and started alternating between old pop and rock favorites sprinkled with grunge and the occasional hip-hop hit. At first we were in a flow, playing tight, but then I began to notice Mike kept throwing off our rhythm. A glance over my shoulder told me he was nursing another bottle of Jack Daniel’s. I didn’t know if he’d paid for it or swiped it. But I did know nothing made a band sound like crap faster than a drunk drummer.

The crowd began to grumble. A few soldier boys threw paper plates in our direction. That was okay but when they started heaving pints of beer I quickly backed up and signaled to Burrito Bill that we had to take a break. To my surprise he crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head, which pissed me off.

It helped that our instruments—particularly Dale’s bass and my electric guitar—were grounded. I’d grounded them myself with a handful of cables that were plugged into the round sockets in the Roadhouse’s wall outlets. But our equipment was old and an electrical short could literally electrocute one of us. I knew from painful experience. Dale and I were up front; it was easy to get sprayed. So I started playing with my back to the crowd, trying to protect my wires. I told Dale to follow my example.

It was then I felt a waterfall of beer pour over my head.

The pickup on my guitar sparked and a scary jolt went through my body. I knew I had to get the instrument off my chest before my heart began to skip but suddenly my arms were no longer connected to my body. I began to panic.

Dale was beside me in an instant, never mind that he was stepping into the same wet pool that was threatening to send me to an early grave. He ripped my guitar over my head and tossed it aside. The hum in my nerves ceased but then my legs stopped working and I collapsed in Dale’s arms. He held me to his chest.

“You’re all right, Fred,” he said. “You’re going to be all right.”

I nodded, unable to speak, although my eyes were working well enough to see Mike and Shelly unplugging our main power cords. The weird thing was Mike still had his whiskey bottle in his hand and I could tell by the look in his eyes that he was feeling the lightning as well, and that soon we’d all be hearing the thunder.

I watched helplessly as he stalked around the stage toward three buzz-cut guys in uniform who stood near the front. From the empty beer pitchers in their hands and the smug grins on their faces I knew they were the ones who’d drenched me. For sure, Mike knew it, too, and he was going to make an example of them.

“What the hell you assholes trying to do?” Mike demanded, going toe-to-toe with them. Three to one; the odds didn’t bother Mike. Two of the soldiers were short and skinny—many pilots were—but the third guy was at least as muscled as Mike and he had a six-inch height advantage and God only knew what kind of reach. He was the one who stepped forward to meet our drummer.

“Wash away the shit that’s playing tonight,” the guy snorted.

Poor choice of words. Mike didn’t start and win fights because of his muscles, particularly when he was drunk. He won because he changed into an animal. The guy was still smirking when Mike cracked his half-empty Jack Daniel’s bottle over his skull. The brown spray that erupted was mixed with a sickly red liquid and the soldier toppled to the floor.

His buddies didn’t approve, and not just the two standing by his side. Every guy in uniform in the Roadhouse leaped to his feet. The women, too; they could be just as deadly. Dale and I looked at each other and neither of us said a word. We didn’t have to.

We knew we were screwed.

The two skinny dudes took a swing at Mike but he took one down with a kick to the crotch and the other with a hard punch to the solar plexus. Mike laughed like a maniac and dared any and all customers to step up to the line. At least four dozen said okay and seconds later Mike was on the floor and getting the shit kicked out of him. Shelly tugged on my arm.

“They’ll kill him!” she cried.

“I’ll kill them!” Dale swore and dove into the fray. It was probably the bravest thing I’d ever seen a sober human being do in my life, and I felt obligated to follow. But first I tried signaling Burrito Bill. I knew he kept a sawed-off shotgun behind the bar. I figured a double-barrel blast into the ceiling would restore order in a hurry.

Unfortunately, Bill was on the wrong side of the room and the mob wasn’t giving him a clear line to his weapon. And now Dale was getting the crap kicked out of him. What could I do? I was a guy, a man’s man, I told myself. And they were my friends; I had to do something. Picking up my unplugged electric guitar, I raised it over my head and prepared to follow Dale and Mike’s extremely brave and extremely foolhardy example. The noise was deafening, louder than when we’d been playing. I swear I thought I was leaping to my death.

Then the room fell silent.

It was eerie. It was as if every screeching voice had suddenly been sucked out of the room by a huge invisible vacuum. I didn’t understand; everyone froze, myself included. The kicking stopped and slowly Mike and Dale, and the three soldiers—even the guy who’d gotten busted over the skull—all sat up and looked around in wonder.

No, they looked up at the girl standing atop a nearby table.

It was Aja but—I don’t know why—it took me several seconds to recognize her. Perhaps it was because she was the last person I expected to see at the Roadhouse. She had on a short silky black dress, her long hair loose down her back. She stood with her arms raised above her shoulders, her palms faced outward as if she were trying to hold the crowd at bay, but gently. Everything about her manner was gentle. It was possible she’d been trying to calm the crowd before the sudden cessation of hostilities but it was only now that I heard her talking.