The House of Tomorrow (36 page)

His voice was a little hesitant, but I didn’t question him again. The lights were dimming further, and we ducked out of the curtain opening and in among the other performers. There were a group of girls in matching tracksuits to the right of us. The magician was there, keeping his distance. And a couple of the other members of the Youth Group stood around in white shirts and bow ties, singing scales. Other performers were practicing in classrooms down the hall. We heard footsteps coming onto the stage in front of us, then a tap on the microphone. Lindsey’s voice came next, so loud that it sounded like the microphone was lodged in her throat.

“HELLO, EVERYONE,” she yelled. “Whoa. Ha! Okay. Welcome to the third annual Immanuel Methodist Youth Group Talent Contest. That’s better. Thanks for coming out in the cold weather, and a very special thanks to those who provided snacks, which are out in the hall, by the way. I recommend the peanut butter cookies! It should be quite a show tonight. We have everything from a dance team to real live . . .”

The microphone sent a deafening squawk out over the crowd and Lindsey giggled. “Whoops! Ha! Well, I guess I don’t have much else to say except that the winner gets two hundred dollars. And the contest will be judged by applause at the end. Okay. So let’s get things started! Our first act tonight is by Holly Halverson, who is going to do her baton act to ‘Love and Praise,’ by the Modern Apostles. Let’s have a round of applause for Holly. Yeah!”

The crowd clapped softly, and I went around to the side of the stage where I could observe the action. The thin girl I had seen twirling the baton earlier was now adorned in a leotard and matching skirt fringed with bright green sequins. She held a long-thin baton out toward the crowd, streamers flowing from the ends. She stood still as a statue until a rolling piano part came from the speakers on the walls of the chapel. Then she started to send the baton around and around in rhythm to the music. The streamers went windmilling with it in a green-and-white blur.

“I can praise and love him,”
began the song.
“I’ll give my everything to him and he will seeeeeeee!”

As the song picked up, she suddenly sent the baton flying into the air like a helicopter. The crowd gasped as a single thin streamer grazed the bottom of the hanging gold cross. But the metal end of the baton just missed and the whole thing came boomeranging back into her grip without incident. She leaped through the air, her sequined fringe catching the lights and sparkling like a row of emeralds.

Up went the baton again, whipping through the air. If you listened closely, you could hear the
whoop-whoop-whoop-whoop
over the swelling orchestration of the song. It spiraled out over the crowd this time. And the spindly girl was in the aisle now, leaping to catch it. For a moment, I thought it might batter an old woman in the second row, but again, the baton landed solidly in the girl’s palm. The crowd hailed her efforts again, louder this time. And when she danced her way back to the stage, the song reaching its crescendo, she was greeted with hoots and whistles throughout the auditorium. Lindsey counted to ten (audibly) and came sprinting back out to center stage.

“Okay,” she said. “Yeah! How about that?”

I stopped listening and went back to search for Jared. He was sitting in the same spot with his eyes closed, humming. I squatted down across from him and he opened his eyes, magnified as always behind his glasses.

“Did you see that?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“It was really pretty accomplished. She was throwing this piece of metal around to the song. It seemed fairly popular with the crowd.”

“I’ve seen it before,” said Jared. “She does it every year.”

On the other side of the curtain, the magician, whose name was Wayne something, was being called to the stage. The crowd clapped at his entrance.

“After this guy,” I said, “it’s us. Are you prepared? This is it.” Jared didn’t answer. He produced his pack of cigarettes and lit one. He stood up and took a deep drag. It was only a moment or two before the performers backstage took notice and started looking over. Lindsey introduced Wayne, and as the crowd quieted, she jogged backstage and spotted Jared right away. She almost dropped her clipboard.

“What the heck do you think you’re doing?” she whispered as loud as she could. “You can’t smoke back here. This is a Methodist church.”

Jared stared at Lindsey for a second and then turned his back on her.

“I know you’re leaving,” he said to me. “Janice told me today.”

Onstage, Wayne was talking about a levitating piece of string. The audience laughed at a joke that I couldn’t quite hear. But it ended with the line, “That’s why I’m always hanging by a thread with this trick. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.”

“There’s nothing I can do,” I said. “I don’t have a choice in the matter. Nana has taken care of me my whole life. She’s my legal guardian.”

Lindsey stepped in front of us. “Hey,” she said. “Did you hear me? I said you can’t smoke in here. Now put out the cigarette or I’m going to have you disqualified.”

People on the dance team were coughing and waving away the smoke. Someone else had appeared with two dogs in matching pink sweaters and one of them started to bark.

“I don’t want you to go,” said Jared. “This is a goddamn travesty.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re not sorry enough!” he said. “You’re my best friend, man. It doesn’t matter that I don’t have any other friends. Okay? You’re such . . . I don’t know. You believe in my stupid ideas. You . . . what the hell am I supposed to do without you around?”

Lindsey walked over and tried to grab the cigarette from Jared’s hand. Instead she knocked it to the ground. It landed by a dance team girl’s foot and the girl screamed.

“Hey,” said Wayne the magician from beyond the curtain. “Settle down back there or I might have to saw someone in half.”

The audience laughed, and he went back to explaining a cup and ball trick.

“Dammit, Lindsey,” said Jared. “Get your righteous ass out of the way. Can’t you see I’m trying to have an important moment here with my friend?”

I grabbed Jared by the biceps to hold him back.

“We’ll still spend time together,” I said.

“Yeah right,” he said. “It’s going to be back to diddling myself in my bedroom. Endless days of diddling.”

“Meredith will be around,” I said. “And your mom. They care about you, Jared. You know they do.”

“I know,” he said. “But we’re not friends. It’s different. Don’t try to make me feel better. It’s not going to work. My life is a giant pile of dung now. I wish none of this would have happened at all.”

“I’m having you disqualified,” said Lindsey. “I made up my mind. I’m going to tell Pastor Ron right now. And you’re going to be out of the show. I don’t have to take this! I’m president of the Youth Group.”

She started walking away, but Jared reached out a hand and grabbed her shoulder.

“Wait, Lindsey,” he said. “Just hang on a second.”

“Let go of me!” she said.

She tried to jerk away from him, and accidentally hit one of the guys in white shirts in the chest. The kid wheezed. Jared held on. I tried to pull his arm away.

And that’s where we were when we heard the sound.

Jared had one hand on Lindsey. I was right behind him, and the dance team was watching in horror. But the sound made us all stop. It was like a thunderclap. Or two thunderclaps in short succession. In reality, it was the sound of the back chapel doors slamming against the wall. The whole crowd quieted at once. Then there was a moment of silence, followed by a shuffling of feet and the sound of the audience murmuring and shifting in their seats.

“Hey,” shouted Wayne from the stage. “What’s going on? I’m trying to finish my act.”

Jared and I let go of Lindsey. And we all walked as if under a spell toward the slit in the curtain. When I got a view, I couldn’t believe what I saw. It was a group of ten, maybe fifteen people led by the clerk from The Record Collector, guiding them forward. They were parading down the aisle, between the rows of pews, and they looked like a bunch of vagrants or mental-hospital patients. Some of them were dressed in leather. Others wore blue jeans that had more holes than fabric. There were spiked hairdos, a couple of Mohawks, and a lot of long greasy hair. Some of them were carrying cans of beer in brown paper bags. And even after they saw the look of the rest of the crowd around them, they moved all the way to the front and huddled around the stage.

“What is this?” asked Lindsey. “What’s happening? Who are these awful people?”

“Holy mother of crap,” said Jared.

Onstage now, Wayne looked like he’d been paralyzed. He held his top hat at his side, gripping the brim tight. He looked over the latest members of the audience. In front of him on the table were three cups, facedown. He took a reluctant step toward them and then tried to continue with his trick as if nothing unusual had transpired. He lifted one of the cups and underneath it was a cotton ball.

“Wait!” he said. “Oh! Hang on, you weren’t supposed to see that. I just got a little . . .”

He laughed nervously and fumbled with the cups, accidentally knocking one off the table. It bounced off the carpet and rolled into the aisle.

“Shit,” said Wayne, louder than he meant to. “Just let me get that cup back . . .”

He bent down to try to spot the cup, and that was what prompted the first round of boos. It began as just one voice, a random heckling from the new crowd. Then there was another lower and more sustained boo. In a couple of minutes, the whole renegade posse at the front was booing Wayne’s magic act. He walked to the edge of the stage, but the crowd wouldn’t part for him to get his cup.

“I need that cup back,” he said.

“Your cup sucks!” yelled a wiry guy in front of him.

A middle-aged man stood up from the crowd in the back, his bald head shining under the lights. “What’s going on here?” he said. “Why don’t you leave my son alone?”

Someone from the group threw a bottle cap and it whizzed right over the man’s head. Then the whole group started jumping up and down. Wayne had turned a bluish pale color, and he didn’t even stop to pick up his cups before leaving the stage from the side. He walked right off the end of the altar and down a side row. He was saying something to himself under his breath the whole way out of the chapel.

Jared and I were completely silent. Our faces were locked in an expression of unabashed awe. I had never seen any of these people around town. I had no idea where they had come from. I was going to ask Jared about this, but before I could get the sentence out, I heard the name of our band uttered for the first time.

“Did you hear that?” I asked.

“Hear what?” he said.

“We want The Rash!” yelled the record clerk.

His crew whistled and shouted and then someone else said it.

“Yeah! Bring on The Rash!”

“Free beer!” someone else yelled.

“That,” I said to Jared.

Then they commenced the feet stomping. Quietly at first, a series of muffled steps on the plastic carpet cover. But they got louder, putting all their weight into it. And they were clapping, too, making the wood of the pews vibrate noticeably. Stomp! Stomp! Clap. Stomp! Stomp! Clap. And in the midst of this racket, our name became a kind of chant. “We want The Rash.” Stomp. “We want The Rash.” Clap.

“Holy mother of all sacred crap,” said Jared.

Lindsey had disappeared somewhere. Wayne had left the building. The dance team was long gone. Only the solitary baton girl was still there. She was watching us with her eyes wide. Jared and I turned around to look at her. The chanting grew louder.

“WE WANT THE RASH! WE WANT THE RASH!”

She peeked out of the slit in the curtains.

“Is that you guys?” she said. “Are you . . . The Rash?”

“Yeah,” said Jared. “That’s our band name.”

She looked at the crowd again and then back to us. “Well, you better go out and play, then,” she said. “Or these assholes are going to tear down our church.”

She turned and walked away from us, her baton streamers trailing behind her. Jared looked at me. “That weird baton girl is right,” said Jared. “I think we have to go out there.”

“But they think we’re a real band,” I said.

An intense look was forming on Jared’s face. A punk snarl combined with that unadulterated focus that came over him from time to time during our practices. He took long deep breaths. Then he put his hand over his chest, feeling his heartbeat.

“Then I guess we’ll have to play like a real band,” he said.

AS BUCKMINSTER FULLER REACHED THE END OF HIS career, he became more and more unwavering in his beliefs about the metaphysical. Some questioned his sanity, yet he continued to claim he was capable of telepathic transmissions. His most oft-cited example of proof was the metaphysical connection he had with audience members during a speaking engagement. He believed, when he was onstage, that he could look out over a crowd and receive hundreds of shortwave messages from his admirers; the easiest method of transmission was to make eye contact. The eyes, said Bucky, provided the fastest and most efficient form of communication on earth.

On that stage, under the golden cross of Immanuel Methodist, I finally understood something of what he was talking about. The next five minutes under the lights came at me in a series of revelatory images. My head was reeling. I gazed around the crowd at the front of the stage and saw every pair of eyes flitting back and forth from me to Jared. I saw the record clerk’s face contorted in a tight-lipped scowl. In his head I saw an image of myself, being booed off the stage while he laughed. I saw one of his friends slurping the foam off the lip of a beer, the white bubbles gathering in his beard. On the inside, this man was terrified for us, pulling for us to do something competent. And in the back row of the pews, there was a line of old ladies whose minds I didn’t need to read. Their looks all said exactly the same thing: What in the name of all that is sacred is this?