WLT (41 page)

Frank put the last slithery show suit in the suitcase, grabbed up a fistful of underwear and one of socks, and stuffed them in. Reverend Odom opened the bathroom door as they both headed out, and the dog hit the back door full-tilt just as they slammed it behind them.

S
lim was standing out in front of the Five Corners. He did not appear to be sober, but he recognized them and boarded the bus without assistance. “I need some smokes,” he said. “Anybody got a quarter?” They got smokes and drove on to the church. Elmer was ready and Rudy, but Wendell was camped in the vestibule signing autographs and cracking jokes and having his picture taken and Frank had to pry him loose from a gaggle of girls, who clung to his seaweed arms, and maneuver the star through the ranks of the faithful and up the bus steps where he turned and flung his arms open wide and yelled, “I love ya! Every one of ya! Love ya!” He ducked into the bus and pulled off his tie and said, “Holy shit, gimme a beer.” Then he peered out the window. “Didja guys see that little brunette number with the blouse? Her nipples were poking out so you coulda hung your coffee cup on'em.” Rudy hooted. “You sure bring out the best in 'em, Brother! You had 'em creaming in their jeans! Not a dry seat in the house tonight!” The bus pulled away from the church at 11:07, by Frank's watch. “Hang on to your socks!” said Red. Elmer was lying in his bunk in back, smoking a cigar. Al was asleep already, butt out in a top bunk, snoring lightly. “I need a woman so bad I can taste her,” said Wendell.

“In six hours,” said Reverend Odom, “we'll be in Roseau, on the radio. Roseau is seven hours from here, I believe. God help us.”

The bus was an old Hawkeye Custom Coach, with inboard toilet and kitchen, that slept eight, supposedly, and there were nine of them, the four Shepherds plus Slim, Reverend Odom, and Red Pfister the driver-drummer, and Barney Barnum the engineer, who also cooked, and Frank who would announce and sell the songbooks and 45s and pass the hat at their church gigs. The bus had belonged to The Rankins, another gospel family and the Shepherd Boys' hated rivals, who were now touring in a larger bus down South, where people loved them and where it was warm. “I hope snakes bite 'em,” said Rudy. “I hope they catch hemorrhoids from each other, great big grapes the size o' lemons, hemmies so big they can't sit down, and then I hope God sends each one of 'em the biggest, hardest stool of their lives. That's what I wish for The Rankins.”

This bus had seemed luxurious to Elmer when it was full of smiling Rankins in their white cowboy suits with the green and gold fringe. He bought it from them hoping some of their luck would come with it, and found out that the clutch was shot. Al nicknamed it Rankins' Revenge, but of course The Rankins were sitting pretty and had nothing to avenge. They were hot, burning up the charts, with a big cheesy photo of them on the cover of
Radio Romance
this month and a story, “The Christmas I Can't Forget,” by that turd Ronnie Rankin describing the Christmas he spent visiting orphanages and handing out gifts to crippled kids—what a liar! No, it was the Shepherds who were dragging ass.

A 6 a.m. broadcast and a noon show just to pay overhead, and an evening concert to earn the salaries, and their profits (if any) had to come from songbook and record sales—WLT was paying them squat for the tour, and as for the sponsors, Home Salad and Prestige Tire & Muffler, their total contribution was thirty quarts of cole slaw and six tubeless tires for the tour, and the slaw was sour and the tires were the wrong size. The people at Home felt that the gospel audience probably was the sort that made its own salads. They told Elmer that they would not renew their sponsorship past January unless things picked up. Meanwhile, Rudy had heard a rumor that The Rankins were about to buy a
plane
.

“I pray to God they crash in flames and land right square on their hinders,” he said.

But the bus was too small for nine, a fact that dawned on them as they sped through St. Cloud and started feeling sleepy. The four bunks were the Shepherds', of course, and Slim and the Reverend Odom, who were shorter, were supposed to share the table, which folded down to make a bed, and Frank and Barney would take turns sleeping in the hammock over the driver's seat, whichever one was not talking to Red and keeping him awake, but the motion of the hammock made a person sick to his stomach, and the table-bed was only four feet wide. A tight left-hand curve would dump the outside man (Slim, who had weak kidneys) into the aisle. He tried to rig up straps to keep himself in, but was afraid he might fall in his sleep and be strangled by them. So nobody slept at first except Al and Rudy and Wendell. And Reverend Odom, slumped in the seat behind the driver. Red was barrelling north at 90 m.p.h. and the Reverend's bald head rolled from side to side like a loose bowling ball. Barney sat at the table, staring out the window at the farms zooming by as they rocketed north on Highway 10, and Frank sat beside him, writing a letter to Maria, and Slim sat across the aisle, slumped down, playing his guitar and singing:

He was just beginning, “There was an old fairy named Elmer,” when Elmer emerged from the back, sat down beside him, and sighed. “This is a hell of a way to start off a tour on such a low note,” he said. Elmer had a slight lisp that got more pronounced when he was upset, and Frank could tell that he was a long way from being upset. Elmer was the oldest Shepherd and he had put up with so much from his brothers, he didn't upset easily.

“Slim,” he said, “I wish you'd try to be a little more positive about the music business.”

“Elmer,” said Slim, “you're even crazier than I am and that's saying something.”

“This band is right on the verge of a big, big success, Slim. You saw those folks tonight. They were crazy about us. We
entertained
those folks tonight. They loved us to death. We weren't like all those poosy-woosy gospel groups who stand around and hum with their hands folded and their eyes rolled up toward the ceiling—man, we did a
show
tonight. No, we're on the verge of success, Slim, and you oughta stick with us, but you get so negative sometimes, it's hard to put up with.”

“Elmer,” said Slim, “this tour is going to hell and it hasn't even started. I saw the itinerary. This show was put together by people who hate you, Elmer. Four and five shows a day, miles apart, in the dead of winter. It's a killer. They're trying to shove us off the end of the earth. This isn't for promotion—you're nuts if you think so. This is winter! It makes no sense. You don't want us down in the dumps? Fine. I'll grin till my teeth get a tan, but that doesn't change facts. We're going up north, the roads are glare ice, and Red is a drummer, not a driver, and one of these nights we skid off the road and into a tree, and we'll have to be buried in closed coffins. Those of us up in the front anyway. You princes back there in your warm beds, I suppose you'll wind up fine.”

Hearing the remark about his driving, Red accelerated. Frank glanced at the speedometer. Ninety-five. “I figure that seventy should be good enough to get us there,” he said, looking over Red's shoulder at the centerline stripes that whooshed underneath them, like solid white rail. Red liked to stay in the middle of the road and take the curves low. He sailed down into the left lane on a left-hand curve and let the force of the curve bring him back up. “You never know when you may lose time later,” he said. “Might run into snow north of here. Gotta make time while the road is good.”

“Candle doesn't rhyme with Wendell,” Elmer pointed out. “I'm going to bed.” He trundled back to his bunk and settled in as the bus went into a sharp curve. He added, “Better get your rest, boys. Big day tomorrow.” A long honk went sailing past them on the left, and Red swore under his breath,
damn farmers
. He held to the middle of the road. Frank leaned around to look out the windshield and to check the speedometer. Back down to ninety, but the road was curvier and there were more dips and potholes. “Looks like the road's getting bad,” he observed. “She'll get worse later on,” said Red. And Slim sang another verse:

He paused, hoping for a word from Al, but Al was out cold, and when Al was asleep, nothing could wake him up before he was ready to rise. The other Shepherds had carried him in and out of buses and hotels, they had parked him in taverns, they had leaned him against the walls and draped him over tables, and once they had floated him in a reflecting pool, to see if a sleeping man will float, and he never woke up once. You could use Al for a shelf, he slept so well. Once, on a
Barn Dance
tour years ago, Slim put the sleeping Al's hand in a bowl of warm water to see if he'd wet the bed. It took three bowls, but it worked, and Al still didn't wake up.

Slim sang a verse about the sailor named Tex who avoided premarital sex by thinking of Jesus and penile diseases and beating his meat below decks.

“I bet you can't do a verse about Elmer,” said Barney. Slim said that for ten dollars he would be glad to do Elmer too. “Ha,” said Barney, “you wouldn't dare.”

As they slowed down to go through Motley, Reverend Odom awoke and stumbled back to the toilet. It was hard to keep his balance, half-asleep, the bus careening from side to side. The toilet was a plywood closet, three feet square, that one of The Rankins had constructed, that sat over the left rear axle. The throne emptied through a large hole straight down onto the inside edge of the left rear tire, presumably so that the deposit would be dispersed. At least, that was the original idea.

The Rankins were famous in the gospel world for their fascination with the colon. Each Rankin had a different secret for regularity, a pill, a potion, a salve, and each of them was glad to talk about it. Sometimes they suffered from the runs and other times they were locked up like Fort Knox, but The Rankins always tried to execute a good bowel movement before each and every performance. They could not sing their best without it. And after years of touring, when The Rankins finally could afford to stay in hotel rooms, they found that they couldn't be sure of a good dump unless they were aboard a speeding bus. So, an hour before the show, the five Rankins would pile into the bus and drive back and forth, up and down the highway, for an hour if necessary, until they were done. No enema ever worked for them in the same way. You could run a hose up a Rankin and never get the results that a ride on the bus would give. But the bus had to be going fast. Right around eighty was where The Rankins got loosened up.

The bus toilet had the opposite effect on the Shepherds. With the toilet seat placed over the rear wheel, a person was liable to get a volley of gravel from below, and the effect of getting a buttload of gravel was to clamp the boys up tight. Whenever a Shepherd disappeared into the john, some drivers liked to veer to the left and get that wheel onto the shoulder and hear the victim howl, but Red was not the sort who went in for jokes of the juvenile kind.

He told Frank this—and told him about The Rankins and their lower-tract peculiarities—a half-hour later as the bus sat parked outside the Milaca hospital. It was one-thirty in the morning and Reverend Odom was inside, having a small twig removed from his member. He had been half-asleep as he stood peeing and when he was impaled, he woke up immediately, but he was dignified about it. “I am bleeding and I need to have a splinter removed,” he announced. “Kindly stop and find me a doctor. Either that or shoot me. It hurts.”

By the time he got mended and had carefully eased himself back onto the bus, it was almost three-thirty. Two hours and twenty minutes to go two hundred miles. Red pulled out on the highway. “Hang on to your shorts,” he said.

Frank had arranged seat cushions on the floor, back behind the luggage, for the old man to sleep on, and he covered him with an old quilt. “I will live, but barely,” Reverend Odom whispered. “I am only grateful that I don't need to explain this to my wife.” And he closed his eyes and began to snore. Barney was asleep on the table. Slim poured himself a cup of whiskey. He tried to pour quietly but Elmer heard it and woke up. “Put the bottle away,” he said.

Slim pointed out the safety aspect of drinking: how so many drunks escape injury in terrible crashes that kill sober men instantly.

“I hate to think of what you're going to sound like in the morning,” said Elmer.

Slim bristled. He stood up and lurched back and hung on to the bunk and informed Elmer that, with the Shepherd Boys, musicianship was a lost cause. The way Wendell hammed it up, you couldn't tell the difference between “Old Rugged Cross” and “Into a Tent Where a Gypsy Boy Lay,” it was all the same to him, and since Wendell sang almost everything in the key of F, Slim used the same fingering and the same licks on every song—it was like cutting two-by-fours at the sawmill. Well, Elmer said, if that was how he felt, there were plenty of sawmills up around Roseau where he could get a job.

“That was not the remark of a true Christian,” Slim said. Then he toppled over on top of Rudy, who was sleeping on his back and who doubled up in pain.