Sons (5 page)

I got dizzy whenever I held that girl in my arms.

“Nancy,” I said to her, “there’s something I’ve got to tell you.”

“What is it, Bert?” she said, and then immediately said, “No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. It’s something terrible.”

“How can you know it’s something terrible?” I asked.

“Because the cream whipped stiff this morning,” she said.

“Oh now, Nancy...”

“That’s a bad sign,” she said.

“Well, this isn’t anything so terrible.”

“What is it?” she said. “No, don’t tell me.”

“I joined the Army this morning,” I said.

She was silent. Her hand tightened in mine, and she looked up into my face, her green eyes wide with shock and disbelief, and then she just sighed and rested her head on my shoulder and still didn’t say anything. I wished she would say something.

“When the clouds roll by I’ll come to you,” Red sang in his deep baritone, the megaphone throwing his voice out into the small hall as couples whirled by us, “Down in lovers lane, my dearie,” girls in velveteen and tricolette, frocks of satin veiled with chiffon, crepes and jerseys, brocades, young men in flannels and tweeds, a few uniforms here and there among the crowd, “So wait and pray each night for me, till we meet again.”

“Nancy?” I said.

“Why’d you do it, Bert?”

“It’s a changing world,” I said.

“Don’t you love me, Bert?”

“I love you, Nance, but it’s a changing world, everything’s changing. They’re talking about renaming Eau Fraiche, did you know that, Nance? They’re talking about calling it Freshwater.”

“What’s that got to do with your getting killed?”

“I’m not going to get killed, Nance.”

“But, Bert, why?” she insisted.
“Why?”

“Because I have to do my part,” I said. “I owe it to America.”

“It’s no use,” she said, “men are but children of a larger growth,” using a tried-and-true family expression, handed down from generation to generation together with a trunkload of proverbs and maxims that Nancy pulled out every so often like cherished relics from another age. I loved her for it. I loved everything about her. I loved the way her hand rested so lightly on my shoulder now, trembling just the tiniest bit, I loved the curve of her waist where my fingers spanned the sash of her gown, I loved the sweet scent of her, and the solemn look of her, the deadly serious look on her face as she raised it to mine, never missing a step, her eyes filming, glittering, caught in the red and blue rotating lights of the hall, Red Reynolds’ voice behind her distorted through the megaphone.

“Don’t die,” she said. “Bert, please don’t die on me, promise me you won’t die.”

The band stopped playing.

I stood with Nancy my love in the middle of the floor. We didn’t say anything for the longest time, we just kept looking into each others’ faces, and finally there was music again, and I smiled at her, and pulled her close, and we danced.

I was at the center of all that sound, the sound buffeted me in successive electronic waves, I felt exhilarated and dizzy and confident, certain now that we’d win the battle. Standing behind my Farfisa organ, I banged out the chord progression of “Louie, Louie,” A, A, A, and D, D, and E minor, E minor, E minor, and D, and D again, and heard Nelson to my left crashing away at the cymbals in rising crescendo. The name of the group was lettered in a psychedelic circle on Nelson’s bass drum, dawn patrol, and the drumskin vibrated now with each successive thumping whap of Nelson’s right foot on the pedal. This group is flying tonight, I thought, we are flying high above it, that’s what this old group is doing, and exuberantly shouted “Haaaaaah,” as Rog went into the final chorus. The sound was incredible. Connie was working the volume on his amp, building the feedback so that he had it sounding like a fifth instrument, Rog whapping away with the fuzz tone up full, Nelson beating the drums to death. My own fingers felt sore and swollen as I struck chords on the organ, sprinkled organ dust into the harmony of lead and bass guitar, threw crashing organ blasts out into the crowd there milling around the school gym. I saw Cass Hagstrom from the corner of my eye, and zocked a big E minor straight at her, and then grinned, and hit the volume pedal as we went into the last four bars.

I was sweating like a pig when we finished. Nelson was wearing a wild flushed crazy look on his face, “I think we took them, Wat,” he said, “Jesus, we sounded great!”

Connie came over, unstrapping his guitar, his big round face broken in a toothy grin. “Hey, how about that?” he shouted, and slapped both me and Nelson on the back, almost sending poor skinny Nelson through his own bass drum. Rog meticulously turned off the amps, put his bass down on the seat of the folding chair, and walked over, looking very serious and pale and worried.

“What do you think?” he said.

“We sounded great,” I answered.

“You think so? I think The Four Ducks were better.”

“Never,” Connie said.

“I think so. They had a better mix.”

“Man, did you hear what I was doing with the feedback?” Connie said, still grinning, still very excited.

“Oh, man, that was tough,” Nelson said.

“Man, we don’t take first place...” Connie started.

“We’ve
got
to take first,” I said. “We don’t take first, the hell with any more battles. Who needs them?”

“We’ll take first,” Nelson assured us both.

“The Ducks were better,” Rog said solemnly, and then took a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his forehead. “Did I sound okay on ‘Rising Sun’?”

“You sounded great,” I said.

“There’s Mr. Jaegers,” Connie said.

“Shhh, shhh.”

Mr. Jaegers, the president of the Talmadge Lions’ Club, which had sponsored this battle of the bands, adjusted the microphone, blew into it, and then said, “Can you hear me back there?” One of the kids standing at the back of the gym shouted, “Yeah, we hear you!” and Mr. Jaegers said, “How’s that?” and a lot of kids this time shouted, “Great, crazy,” and Mr. Jaegers blew into the microphone again, and said, “Our three judges are now deliberating, but before we give you their results, I’d like to make a few acknowledgments. I want to thank, first of all, the ladies of the church Altar Society for providing tonight’s refreshments, and especially Mrs. Peggy Greer, who contacted the Coca-Cola Company and had them deliver the dispenser set up in the hall outside. I want to thank Mr. Teale, your principal, who gave the Lions’ Club every cooperation in making the school and the gymnasium available tonight for the battle. And I want to thank our three judges — Mr. Coopersmith, who, as you know, is in broadcasting, and who was kind enough to come over here tonight, and also Mr. Isetti of the Clef and Staff Music Shop in town, and our third judge, who like yourselves, is a teen-ager and a member of The...” Mr. Jaegers paused, consulted the slip of paper in his hand again, turned away from the microphone, and asked, “What docs this say?”

“The Butterfly Push,” I said.

“... a member of The Butterfly Push,” Mr. Jaegers said into the microphone, “that’s the name of his band. But most of all, I would like to thank Mr. Kevin Price of the Lions’ Club, whose idea it was to have this battle, and who worked so hard co-ordinating all the various elements that have gone into making it a success.”

“Come on, already,” Nelson whispered. “Who
won
the damn thing?”

“Now, to reiterate,” Mr. Jaegers said into the microphone, “and before our judges read off the results, there were five bands playing tonight, and they played for you in this order, first was Sound, Incorporated, second was Phase Nine, third was The Morse Code, fourth was The Four Dukes, and last, the band you just heard, was Dawn Patrol. Now, if Mr. Coopersmith will come to the stand, I’m sure we’re all anxious to know who the winners arc. Mr. Coopersmith?”

I waited patiently while Leon Coopersmith, who lived in madge and who was a radio executive in New York, his desk job there presumably making him an expert on rock and roll, what with rubbing elbows with Cousin Brucie and Dandy Dan Daniel and the like all day long; waited while Leon Coopersmith, whom I had seen drunk on many an occasion at parties in our own living room, waddled to the stage weighing two hundred and ten pounds bone-dry, clasped the microphone in a pair of meaty hands, backed away from the sudden feedback, big radio executive that he was, removed one hand from the mike to consult the slip of paper in his hands, cleared his throat, and said, “Okay, kids, want to quiet down for just a few seconds?”

A hush fell over the gymnasium. Out on the floor, I could see Scott Dundee putting his arms around Cass from behind. I watched, hoping she’d move away from him, but she didn’t move, she just let him circle her waist from behind, and then she folded her own arms over his, very cozy, I thought, while I played my brains out and my fingers to the bone.

“Taking third prize of twenty-five dollars,” Mr. Coopersmith who was in broadcasting said in his whiskey-snarled voice, “is The Morse Code, will a member of that group please come up to the stage to accept the check?”

“So far, so good,” Connie whispered.

There was applause from the kids, but not too much applause because The Morse Code was John Yancy’s group, and he lived over in Wilton and didn’t even go to Talmadge High. Yancy came up wearing a scrub beard and a bright red vest — all the guys in his group wore red vests, in fact, like Guy Lombardo or one of those big bands of the forties, though Kenton wasn’t too bad, I’d heard my father playing some of his Kenton collection on the hi-fi just the other night; pretty far out, I guessed, compared to the other stuff they were playing in those days. Anyway, I shouldn’t have been knocking my father’s taste, I supposed, since it was he who’d suggested the name “Dawn Patrol” when we were first starting the group. He’d initially come up with some names that were supposed to be comical, like The Sound and The Fury or The Intolerable Boils or The Noisemakers, horsing around when all the guys were seriously considering names for the group, making a pest of himself until he finally suggested Dawn Patrol, which none of the guys except Connie realized was a reference to a movie about World War I (Connie being a movie bull and also an avid watcher of old-time crap on television), but which all of us liked, anyway. “You mean I actually gave you an idea?” my father said. “Will miracles never?”

So Dawn Patrol it had been, and Dawn Patrol it still was, though many of the other groups changed their names constantly, like The Four Dukes, affectionately known far and wide as The Four Ducks. They once used to be called The Four Barons, nobly elevating themselves only after they’d been around for three months, and putting a sign up on their very next job, the sign reading THE FOUR DUKES, FORMALLY THE FOUR BARONS, which gave everybody but the illiterate Ducks a great big laugh.

Yancy was nodding and offering profuse thanks to everyone for the dubious honor of having placed third with his inept group. Mr. Coopersmith shook his hand with genuine enthusiasm, as though congratulating John Lennon, and Yancy finally sidled off the stage, all grins and embarrassment. Mr. Coopersmith gripped the mike again, leaned into it, and said, “In second place, winning a prize of fifty dollars...” He hesitated here, and I held my breath, figuring if we didn’t take second, we were
sure
to take first, and Mr. Coopersmith said, “In second place... Phase Nine!”

Nelson gave a short nod as the crowd burst into applause, confirming my surmise: we were sure to take first now. Only Rog looked his usual sallow gloomy self, chewing on his fingernails as Peter Drew come up to the stage to accept the fifty-dollar check for Phase Nine. There was more applause, and a few catcalls (“You got robbed, Pete!”) and Mr. Coopersmith clutched Drew’s hand in both his own meaty hands and grinned approval from that great big world of radio broadcasting, and then Drew looked at the check, and nodded, and folded it. and put it into his wallet, and walked off the stage to where Donna Fields was waiting for him. She gave him a big hug, and I automatically glanced out over the gym floor to see how Cass was doing with Dundee’s arms still around her, and Mr. Coopersmith held up one of his hands for silence again, and then said, “Now... before I announce the winner of the first prize. I’d like to tell you that the winning band’ll be playing for an additional half-hour, and I hope you’ll all stay around to listen and dance. So... in first place... for a prize of one hundred dollars...”

Again, Mr. Coopersmith paused. He grinned out at the audience. I glanced at Rog, who was busily chewing his fingernails.

“In first place,” Mr. Coopersmith said, “Sound, Incorporated!”

“Sound, In—” Nelson started, and then turned to me with an enraged look on his face, gripping my arm fiercely just below the elbow, and then turning to gape at Mr. Coopersmith, as though certain he had made some terrible mistake. Rog, expecting disaster all along, merely nodded his head knowingly. Connie sat abruptly in one of the folding chairs and slapped his hand to his forehead. The response from the teen-age audience was mixed, some of them cheering and applauding, some of them booing and shouting at the stage. Mr. Coopersmith, unperturbed in his broadcasting tower, waited blandly for Gerry Haig to come up onto the stage for Sound, Incorporated, and collect the group’s ill-gotten hundred bucks.

“That’s the last time,” I said. “I swear to God, that’s the last time we play a battle!”

“Sound, In
corp
orated!” Nelson exploded. “They’re the worst group here!”

“It figures,” Rog said gloomily.

“Let’s pack up,” Connie said.

“You want to congratulate the winners?”

“The winners
suck,”
Nelson said.

Angrily, convinced that there was no justice in the world, we began unplugging our leads, winding them up, covering the amps, taking our mike stands apart, unscrewing the organ legs, packing the guitars and drums. Danny Boll, who had been one of the judges, and who prior to this January had been the rhythm guitarist of the best group in the area, The Butterfly Push, most of whom were now away at college or in the Army, came up onto the stage while we were still packing. “If it’s any consolation,” he said, “I voted for you guys.”