A Tale of the Roaring Presses
Part 8
Possumhaw, Randoph County
The Big Moment
71
“Down by the ollllllllld miiiiiiilllllll streeeeeeeeeeeaaaam!”
The audience cheered and threw their popcorn and programs into the air.
Timmy Lee smashed his electric guitar on the stage in appreciation as the band disappeared into the wings in a puff of magician’s smoke.
“Oh wowwwwww,” said Greenleigh from the front row, getting all this on his digital camera.
The mayor took the stage, grinning and coughing and waving his hat. “Barfdog!” he shouted. “Let’s hear it for ‘em!”
Roy Henry stood in the wings, scribbling furiously.
“We are taking the battle of the bands concept to a new level,” said Surly Gribble, adjusting the huge orange feather on the front of his bandleader hat. He sneered upward in the general direction of the audience from the safety of the trapdoor behind the stage. “When my performance stops the show … nay, ends the show … everyone in the Tri-County area will know beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Possumhaw Bagoo Festival of 2010 has been rocked.” He brandished his baton like an unhinged twirler. “Rock-ed!”
The mayor peered around the corner. “You’re on, Sergeant Pepper,” he said, rolling his eyes upward and vanishing as quickly as he had arrived.
72
The discordant strains of “Stairway to Heaven,” blared by a perky marching band in lively march tempo, quickly brought the audience to their feet. Waving cigarette lighters and swaying in time to the music, they rushed the stage.
“Stop the music!” yelled Eugenia Brewer, brandishing some branches from the late lamented Willow House.
“Burn the stage!” hollered the chief of the local volunteer fire department, flicking his lighter in a desperate attempt to start a flame.
“Shoot the director!” hollered one of the tuba players. The drummers cheered.
“You’re so uncool!” screamed Amber Lee, knocking a Jaycee cold with her cymbal.
“Philistines!” hollered Surly Gribble, throwing his hat on the besieged stage and stomping up and down on it. “Sic ‘em, musicians! Sic ‘em for me!”
The trombone section brandished their instruments with deadly precision, taking out some metalheads who drove all the way down from Aurora to see Barfdog.
“Oh wowwww,” said Greenleigh, snapping the front page shot before suddenly collapsing.
“Whoopsie,” said Erlene, lowering her skillet. “Looking for Fatboy.”
“Quiet!” bellowed Jerry Lee, firing his gun.
“Don’t do that!” hollered Grover and his Paw.
The crowd parted and quickly returned to their seats.
“Medic,” said the deputy weakly.
73
Next on the bill was a soothing performance by the Mary Todd Lincoln Singers and some Civil War re-enactors armed with bugles and mandolins.
Greenleigh winced as the ambulance attendants loaded his stretcher into a vehicle bound for Sparta. “If they’re the Mary Todd Lincoln Singers,” he asked a concerned-looking Roy Henry, handing him the camera, “why are they doing Fleetwood Mac?”
“I’m sure Mary Todd Lincoln didn’t stop thinking about tomorrow,” said the newsman as Sheriff Jimbo and Grover each took his arm and steered him in the direction of the stage.
“Bobbie Lee’s not up there,” Sheriff Jimbo whispered. “Find her!”
“We’ll check in on your boss later,” Grover said.
“Swampy’ll watch you,” said the sheriff, depositing him by the bandstand. “Been a while since he checked in, but I’m sure he’s already right in the middle of the action.”
***
Swampy mooed in abject terror and fought desperately to escape from the cow suit.
The crowd at Judd’s Field cheered and three sinister midgets slunk noiselessly away in the direction of the funhouse.
“And now, podners,” boomed Quick-Ridin’ Annie Schlemmerschmidt, tossing her oversized lariat, “let the Methodist Senior League’s Cattle Brandin’ Contest begin!”
Fourteen angry old ladies approached.
74
The mayor was snoring at the podium when Roy Henry walked backstage where the Accordion Lizards were warming up. The newsman cringed, sidestepped a disconsolate Surly Gribble, who was drawing some strange kind of blueprint on an old piece of canvas, spied an old ukelele sticking out of a crate of two-by-fours and, out of long-forgotten habit, picked it up and tuned it. He found his fingers forming a C-sharp chord and, filled with sudden loathing and embarrassment, quickly tried to put it back in the crate where he found it.
A firm hand gripped his shoulder. “Oh, no you don’t!” boomed a voice behind him. “Program’s running short! You’re on now!”
His unseen assailant rushed him through the crowd of musicians and pushed him onstage just as the Mary Todd Lincoln Singers were leaving. The mayor brightened. “And now, a new one-man band,” he said. “Friends and neighbors, I’d like to present …”
“Ham Stewart,” marveled Cap, as the middle-aged, mustached, thick-lensed newsman launched into a totally impromptu performance of “Stairway to Heaven.” The audience cheered.
“Ham Stewart?” Eugenia Brewer stopped weaving her program into a useful placemat for museum visitors.
Mama smiled from the concessions booth. “Ham’s back!”
75
A hush fell over the audience as the newsman played the final chord.
“What’s wrong, Pa?” asked Grover, as a wave of applause slowly worked its way through the bleachers and rows of lawn chairs and blankets.
Sheriff Jimbo’s uniform cap lay in shreds at his feet, along with his program and three unfilled-out speeding tickets. “Not a thing,” he said, dusting off his hands over and over and over.
***
“What’s wrong, Ma?”
Mama was in her happy place. “He came for me,” she said, straightening her hair. Unsatisfied, she took it off and replaced it with her pink beehive. “Erlene, I must go to him.”
Erlene handed a wounded Jerry Lee his fifteen glass of lemonade with extra maple syrup and checked out her mother’s reflection in the potbellied goon’s sunglasses.
“Big Bill?” she asked. She sneered at the stage, where Roy Henry was signing autographs and turning down several requests for “Smoke On The Water.” “You know as well as I do he’s gonna help you win the contest.”
Mama glanced at the bandstand, then admired her reflection in the deputy’s sunglasses.
“Yes,” she purred. “He certainly is.”
The deputy’s mustache grinned back.
“More syrup?” asked Mama sweetly.
76
Sheriff Jimbo pounded the door of the sound truck. It slid open slowly.
Slade sat at the console, headphones on, snapping his fingers while Roy Henry played Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung” for an appreciative Historical Society.
“My daughter sings,” he informed the lawman, who quickly climbed inside, slamming the door behind him. “I wonder if Roy knows gospel … what’s wrong, Jimbo?”
The sheriff’s mirrored sunglasses lay in pieces in his hands.
His mustache turned upward nervously. “Not a thing,” he said, dropping the fragments into his lap. “What’d you hear from Swampy?”
“Sitting on a park bench,” Slade sang. He lowered the headphones. “Not a thing.”
In the distance, barely audible above the fun of the fair, a siren approached from the direction of Sparta.
Slade turned off the console. “Shoot!” he said.
***
The ambulance attendant ripped the duct tape from Swampy’s heavy mustache.
The ex-fed screamed and fought off imaginary branding irons.
“Who did this?” asked Sheriff Jimbo as a squadron of Legionnaires applied first aid to the badly singed patient..
Swampy’s bloodshot eyes had a maniacal gleam. “She paid them,” he said. A tear dripped slowly into his good ear. “She paid those midgets to beat me up.”
77
The sheriff, looking severely chastened, climbed back into the sound truck.
“Wire still working?” he asked above the din of applause.
Slade nodded. “He’s going backstage now.” His brow furrowed. “Hope he doesn’t decide to go to the bathroom. Remember the governor?”
Sheriff Jimbo smiled. “He shouldn’t have asked for seconds at that two hundred dollar-a-plate chili supper.” He stifled a laugh.
Slade chuckled. “Hold on. Something’s happening.”
“Turn it up,” said the sheriff, tearing into a roll of antacids.
***
“You should be very pleased with yourself,” snapped Surly Gribble, whose blueprints were now covering the back of an entire panoramic backdrop. “Song stealer!”
Roy Henry put the ukulele back in the crate where he found it. “Not really,” he said, placing his fifty-pound gold foil-covered bittersweet chocolate trophy down by the twisted remains of Barfdog’s drums, destroyed during their performance a la The Who. “I’ve become the story, rather than merely covering it.” His mustache drooped sadly. “I had things to do tonight. All my friends are in the hospital. And I really, really hate the ukelele.” He studied his trophy and remembered he hadn’t eaten since those godawful chocolate potato flakes.
Surly made a yodeling noise and lunged.
78
Bobbie Lee stepped around the prone band director and approached the newsman.
Roy Henry, mouth stuffed with bittersweet chocolate, nodded at her enthusiastically and swallowed. “I’ve been looking all over for you,” he said, quickly wiping brown drool from his mustache. “May I have a word?”
“Sayonara,” said the Dragon Lady, raising her right hand.
***
Slade nearly tripped over the groaning band director and knocked over the rest of Barfdog’s drum kit. “Shoot!” he said, brandishing his gun.
“Yes, please shoot,” whined Surly Gribble as Sheriff Jimbo quickly checked his vital signs. “Everything else always happens to me!”
The lawman dropped him and sprinted for the trapdoor. “No time to lose,” he told Slade, whose mouth was full of trophy. The big man put down the massive hunk of chocolate, now twelve pounds lighter, and broke off another nine or ten pounds to carry with him.
“I shoulda followed him,” Slade said, following the sheriff down a flight of wooden steps that seemed to go on forever and ever. He shuddered. “Lord knows where he is and what she’s already done to him.”
***
The long, metal drawer slid open.
Rubbing his eyes, Roy Henry replaced his Coke-bottle spectacles and gasped.
79
“I’ll change my ways!” the newsman pleaded as the heavily cloaked, hooded figure with the red glowing eyes pointed noiselessly at him. “I’ll keep Christmas! Two, maybe even three times a year, if necessary!”
The black-shrouded apparition growled impatiently and pointed at the sign on the wall.
“Morgue?” said Roy Henry. “Are we just visiting, or…” His beleaguered mind raced. “Or…”
The creature growled and kicked the metal drawer and motioned for the newsman to arise and meet his fate.
“O tell me, creature,” said the newsman, staying put, “are these the shadows of things that are, or merely the shadows of things that are yet to be, but could be changed somehow, if only we…”
The figure roared and seized him by the ankles and dragged him around the dusty linoleum floor. Tiring of this rather quickly due to the newsman’s heft, it seized him by the neck, stood him full height and pushed him around a corner of boxes to a light table where several photos, crumbling news clippings and three microfilm machines displaying various ancient front pages waited cheerfully for him.
“Dig!” growled the apparition, pushing him into a chair in front of the first viewing machine.
80
Roy Henry gazed. A mustached figure squinted back at him. “It’s me,” the newsman said, amazed. Suddenly the synapses in his tired brain connected in one blinding flash of insight.
“It’s me,” he said with grim determination, reading on.
The portly but genial Hamilton Stewart Jr. followed his esteemed father, Judge Hamilton Stewart Sr., into law and politics, spending years in the big city (Springfield) after being left at the altar by a sprightly miss who looked vaguely familiar. He married Ginger, who looked extremely familiar by now, fathered a son and came home after his parents died in suspicious circumstances during a ghastly highway wreck involving their Cadillac Seville, a pickup truck and the plane of a rock star on a winter tour. Relocating his law practice, he became an alderman, the mayor and the esteemed creator of the Possumhaw Bagoo Festival, may it forever stand. Then, in rapid succession, he lost his car, his house, his practice and his elected title.
And then he disappeared.
“Sheriff Jimbo doesn’t come off too well in these stories,” the newsman informed the apparition, who growled and pointed at the screen. The Tayder family, young and smiling, advertised the diner.
Roy counted.