The Day the Music Died (18 page)

“He was hit by a train?”

“Very funny. He was named Young Lawyer of the Year by the State Bar Association.”

“Goody,” I said, and left.

T
HE HIGH SCHOOL HAD
a program where kids who worked got off at 2:45 instead of 3:15 so they could go to their jobs. They also got credit for having the jobs. A commie would look at it as a sweet but dishonest plan by greedy merchants to get cheap labor. I wondered what Ayn Rand would make of it.

It’s funny that at my age, not long out of law school, I was as sentimental as an old man. The girls looked great, shiny and new, and I knew what most of the boys would do, ride around in their cars and then play a little pool or pinball, and then head home for a quick dinner where they would evade every single important question their parents threw at them. God, it all seemed so far away and so wonderful, MGM wonderful, sort of like an Andy Hardy movie except the girls would let you get to third base and you had all those great Dashiell Hammett and Ed Lacy novels to read.

Now, I had responsibilities and people expected things of me and even at my age I could see a few gray hairs on my head, one of the McCain genetic curses.

I sat there and listened to a local station that played rock and roll in the afternoon. I was nostalgic about rock, because it’d changed, too. They played a lot of Fabian and the Kingston Trio and, God almighty, novelty songs like “Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini.” And then I started thinking about Buddy Holly again and how Jack Kerouac said that even at a very young age he’d had this great oppressive sense of loss, of something good and true vanished, something he could never articulate, something he had carried around with him as young as age eight or nine, maybe when his brother died. I guess I had, too, this melancholy, and somehow Buddy Holly dying at least gave me a tangible
reason
for this feeling. Maybe it’s just all the sadness I see in the people around me, just below the surface I mean, and the fact that there’s nothing I can do about it. Life is like that sometimes.

Ruthie came out the front door as I’d expected. I was parked up the street. She looked preoccupied and didn’t see me. She just started walking fast toward downtown, which was three blocks north. It was overcast now and the temperature was dropping and the school seemed shabby suddenly, shabby and old, and the sense of loss I had became anger and I felt cheated then, as if my past really hadn’t been all that wonderful, as if I’d made up a fantasy about my past just because I was afraid to face adulthood. Maybe Joyce Brothers, the psychologist who’d won all that money on the TV show
The $64,000 Question
before everybody found out some of it was a fake, maybe she could explain my sudden mood swings. Nobody in this little Iowa town could, that was for sure.

When Ruthie reached the corner of the school grounds, I was there waiting. She got in.

I said, “Did you try that stuff?”

She stared straight ahead. She looked pale and tired. “It didn’t work.”

“Oh.”

“And it really burns down there now.”

“Maybe—”

“Just don’t give me any advice right now, okay?” She still didn’t look at me.

“Okay.” Then, “How’re you feeling, physically, I mean?”

“I’m too tired to know. Let’s just not talk, all right?”

“All right.”

“Could I turn that off? Why can’t they play anything decent?”

She snapped off the radio. The song had been “The Purple People Eater.” Then, “I’m sorry I’m so bitchy.”

“It’s all right. I’d be bitchy, too.”

“I just need to handle this.”

“Don’t do anything crazy, Ruthie.”

“I don’t think I’m the ‘crazy’ type, do you?”

“No, I guess not.”

“I’ve got a couple of girls working on a couple of things for me.”

“Like what?”

“I’m not sure. They just both said they could probably come up with something.”

“God, Ruthie, didn’t you hear what happened to the girl they found last night?”

“Oh, I heard, all right. But it was obviously somebody who didn’t know what he was doing.”

“You shouldn’t let anybody except a doctor touch you.”

“It doesn’t have to be a doctor. It’s not a tough thing to do if you know what you’re doing.”

“You’re scaring the hell out of me, Ruthie.”

“My life’s over if I have this baby.”

“I know, Ruthie. But still—”

“Here we are.”

I pulled over to the curb. Sheen’s Fashion Fountain was the most expensive woman’s apparel shop in town. It was where you bought your girlfriend a gift if it was her birthday or if you’d really,
really
pissed her off.

She opened the door right away. I had one of those moments when she didn’t look familiar. Her fear and grief had made her a stranger. I reached over and touched her cheek. “I love you, Ruthie. You know that. I wish you’d let me help you.”

“I did this to myself. It’s my responsibility.”

“You need a ride home tonight?”

“I can ride with Betty.”

Betty was one of the older clerks. She drove to work and lived about two blocks from Mom and Dad.

“I know some people in Cedar Rapids,” I said. “They may know a doctor there.”

She leaned over and returned my cheek kiss. “Thanks. But let me see what my friends come up with first, all right?”

“Just please let me know what’s going on.”

“I promise.”

She got out of the car. I sat there in gloom, gray and cold as the overcast afternoon itself. Then a car horn blasted me. I was in a No Parking Zone and holding up traffic.

M
AGGIE YATES LIVED ABOVE
a double garage on the grounds of a burned-out mansion. One of the servants had lived in the garage during the better days of the manse. Now it was rented out as an apartment. Maggie’s bike lay against the wooden steps leading up the side of the garage and Miles Davis’ music painted everything a brooding dusky color. I had to knock a couple of times in order for her to hear me above the music.

Maggie was dressed in black. Black turtleneck, black jeans, black socks. Her long red hair was, as always, a lovely Celtic mess and her Audrey Hepburn face was, also as always, a lovely Celtic mess of winsomeness and melancholy.

The walls behind her told the story. Photographs of Albert Camus, Jack Kerouac, James Dean, Charlie Parker and Eleanor Roosevelt covered one wall, while album covers of Gil Evans, Jerry Mulligan, Odetta and Dave Brubeck covered another.

Maggie was the town’s resident beatnik. She was somewhere in her early thirties, had graduated from the University of Iowa and was holing up here, she said, so she could write her novel. A lot of times I’d pull up outside and I could hear her banging away on the portable typewriter that sits on the table next to a large window overlooking what used to be a duck pond. As yet, she hasn’t let me see as much as a paragraph of the book. But she keeps promising that I’ll be the first to read it.

She said, “C’mon in. But I better warn you, McCain. My period started today. And you know I just don’t like to do it when I’m menstruating.”

I tried my best to sound hurt. “You think the only reason I come over here is for sex?”

“Sure,” she said. “And that’s the only reason I let you in. I mean, I get my jollies, and you do, too.”

I guess this was the brave new world Hugh Hefner talks about all the time. You know, frank and open discussions between the sexes about s-e-x. In some ways, I like it. It’s nice coming over here and spending a couple of hours in Maggie’s bed and then just leaving and going back to my own little world. I usually make it over here once or twice a week. She has a great body. She says I’m the only “civilized” person in town except for Judge Whitney, whom she says is a “fascist.” That’s why she sleeps with me, she says, me not being: one, a dope, or two, a redneck. She won’t accept compliments or anything remotely like affection. One time I said to her, “You really are beautiful, Maggie.” She said, “Can the crapola, McCain. You’re here because you need sex. That’s all that’s going on here.” I always felt cheated. I want to say lovey-dovey stuff, maybe for my sake as much as hers. The lovey-dovey stuff is nice to say even if you don’t mean it—or sometimes even if it’s being said to you and you know
she
doesn’t mean it. It’s like having a smoke afterward.

She said now, “I’m in sort of a hurry. Pete Seeger’s in Iowa City tonight. I was just getting ready. My ride should be here any time.”

I tried very hard not to look at the sweet smooth curves of that body packed into the black sweater and black jeans. Why not combine a little sex with detection? Hadn’t
Mike Hammer
shown us the way?

The apartment consisted of a large living room that looked surprisingly middle-class given all the jazz musicians and literary heroes on the walls; a small bedroom with a very comfortable double bed and a kitchen and bathroom big enough for only one person at a time.

“I didn’t know you hung out with Susan Frazier,” I said.

She was opening her purse, checking her billfold for money. “Oh, I never really ‘hung out’ with her. She was interested in art so we went to Leopold Bloom’s a few times and I explained Picasso and Chagall and Van Gogh to her. I mean, not that I know all that much myself. God, the guy that runs that store is such a pretentious asshole. You ever notice that?”

“No, I never did,” I said deadpan. “He’s one of my favorite people.”

She whipped her head up and giggled at me. “McCain, you’re a certified nut, you know that?”

Now, she was at the closet, digging out a heavy coat.

I said, “You know much about her personal life?”

She put her coat on. Looked at herself in a mirror by the door. “What’re
you
going to do tonight, McCain? Stay home and watch
Father Knows Best?”

I’d made the mistake of telling her that TV shows like that were necessary to society because, corny as they were, they gave us a sense of right and wrong. I believed that. She didn’t.

A car horn sounded.

“My ride,” she said. “Gotta hurry.”

“Hey,” I said. “Just one question.”

“I really am in a hurry, McCain,” she said, grabbing her purse from the coffee table.

“She ever tell you she was in any kind of trouble?”

“Just once,” she said, as she opened the door and ushered me out onto the tiny porch.

“What’d she say?”

As she was locking the door from the outside, she said, “She called one night pretty drunk and said it was going to be all over town very soon.”

“What was?”

Maggie turned and faced me. “She never got around to telling me. She passed out. She couldn’t drink worth a damn.”

Then I was following her down the stairs two steps at a time, asking her a few more questions.

I half ran after her to the waiting car. Inside was a slim, balding guy who wore sunglasses and a black turtleneck. I hadn’t known that Maggie was dating vampires, but I was happy for her. A mordant jazz song could be heard when she opened the door and slid inside. Then song, Maggie and vampire were gone.

I sat in the library until five-thirty. Every ten minutes or so I’d go over and try Debbie Lundigan’s phone number. I wanted to find out if Susan Whitney had ever talked to her about the blackmail. There was no answer. I finally gave up on the phone and drove over there. Debbie lived in an old house that had been converted into two apartments, one up, one down. It was actually a big house, but then you needed the extra space to share with all the rats and cockroaches.

Winter dusk. The sky a moody rose and black with bright tiny stars and a bright quarter moon. Frost already glittering on the windshields of parked cars. To reach Debbie’s place you had to climb rickety stairs up the north side of the green-shingled house. You could smell the dinner from the ground-floor apartment, something homey with a tomato base.

I was just about to start up the steps when somebody came from the shadows and said, “Who the hell’re you?”

At first, I couldn’t see him. He was more shadow than substance. He came a few steps closer and I saw him a lot better. He was imposing. The uniform was regulation army but the decorations were anything but. He was a paratrooper, all spit and polish, caged energy and rage. Then he said, “Hey, McCain, you little bastard. I didn’t know it was you!”

Finally, I recognized him, too. Mike Lundigan, Debbie’s older brother. He’d been a year behind me in high school. He’d enlisted in the army two days after graduating.

“Hey, Mike! How’s it going?”

“Just got back stateside last week and came home here fast as I could.”

“Where you been?”

“South Vietnam. Ever hear of it?”

“No.”

“Our side is fighting the commies over there. Ike’s been sending military advisers. I was over there for a year.” He grinned around the cigarette he’d just stuck in his mouth. “We’re gonna kick their yellow asses, man. In no time at all.”

A car swept up to the curb. The passenger door opened. Loud country music poured from the radio. Debbie got out, said good night, closed the door and the car took off.

Mike ran to her. She screamed his name when she saw him and then hurried into his arms. They’d been orphaned the year after she graduated high school; their folks were killed in a car accident. They had good reason to cling to each other.

After a few minutes, they looked back at me. I walked over to them. “Debbie, I’ve got a couple more questions I’d like to ask you. But how about if I call you a little later tonight?”

Mike shook his head. “Listen, I was going to run down to the liquor store before it closes and pick up a bottle. Why don’t you two talk while I’m gone?”

Debbie nodded. “Fine with me.”

Mike kissed her on the cheek then shook my hand. “Be right back.”

He hadn’t been kidding about running down to the liquor store. He took off at a trot, his heavy lace-up paratrooper boots slamming the sidewalk hard.

“You have a cigarette, McCain? Mine are upstairs.”

She always said that. Debbie’s favorite brand of smokes was OPs—Other People’s. She’d been that way since ninth grade. I gave her a Pall Mall and lit it for her.