Save a Place in the Lifeboat for Me
THE HILL WAS HIGH AND COLD when they appeared there, and the first thing they did was to look around.
It had snowed the night before, and the ground was covered about a foot deep.
Arthur looked at Leonard and Leonard looked at Arthur.
“Whatsa matter you? You wearin’ funny clothes again!” said Leonard.
Arthur listened, his mouth open. He reached down to the bulbhorn tucked in his belt.
Honk Honk went Arthur.
“Whatsa matter us?” asked Leonard. “Look ata us! We back inna vaudeville?”
Leonard was dressed in pants two sizes too small, and a jacket which didn’t match. He wore a tiny pointed felt hat which stood on his head like a roof on a silo.
Arthur was dressed in a huge coat which dragged the ground, balloon pants, big shoes, and above his moppy red hair was a silk top hat, its crown broken out.
“It’s a fine-a mess he’s gots us in disa time!”
Arthur nodded agreement.
“Quackenbush, he’s-a gonna hear about this!” said Leonard.
Honk Honk went Arthur.
* * *
The truck backed into the parking lot and ran into the car parked just inside the entrance. The glass panels which were being carried on the truck fell and shattered into thousands of slivers in the snowy street. Cars slushing down the early morning swerved to avoid the pieces.
“Ohh, Bud, Bud!” said the short baby-faced man behind the wheel. He was trying to back the truck over the glass and get it out of the way of the dodging cars.
A tall thin man with a rat’s mustache ran from the glass company office and yelled at the driver.
“Look what you’ve done. Now you’ll make me lose this job, too! Mr. Crabapple will . . .” He paused, looked at the little fat man, swallowed a few times.
“Uh . . . hello, Lou,” he said, a tear running into his eye and brimming down his face. He turned away, pulled a handkerchief from his coveralls and wiped his eyes.
“Hello, Bud,” said the little man, brightly. “I don’ . . . don’ . . . understand it either, Bud. But the man said we got something to do, and I came here to get you.” He looked around him at the littered glass. “Bud, I been a baaad boy!”
“It doesn’t matter, Lou,” said Bud, climbing around to the passenger side of the truck. “Let’s get going before somebody gets us arrested.”
“Oh, Bud?” asked Lou, as they drove through the town. “Did you ever get out of your contract?”
“Yeah, Lou. Watch where you’re going! Do I have to drive myself?”
They pulled out of Peoria at eight in the morning.
* * *
The two men beside the road were dressed in black suits and derby hats. They stood; one fat, the other thin. The rotund one put on a most pleasant face and smiled at the passing traffic. He lifted his thumb politely, as would a gentleman, and held it as each vehicle roared past.
When a car whizzed by, he politely tipped his hat.
The thin man looked distraught. He tried at first to strike the same pose as the larger man, but soon became flustered. He couldn’t hold his thumb right, or let his arm droop too far.
“No, no, no, Stanley,” said the larger, mustached man, as if he were talking to a child. “Let me show you the way a man of gentle breeding asks for a ride. Politely. Gently. Thus.”
He struck the same pose he had before.
A car bore down on them doing eighty miles an hour. There was no chance in the world it would stop.
Stanley tried to strike the same pose. He checked himself against the larger man’s attitude. He found himself lacking. He rubbed his ears and looked as if he would cry.
The car roared past, whipping their hats off.
They bent to pick them up and bumped heads. They straightened, each signaling that the other should go ahead. They simultaneously bent and bumped heads again.
The large man stood stock still and did a slow burn. Stanley looked flustered. Their eyes were off each other. Then they both leaped for the hats and bumped heads once more.
They grabbed up the hats and jumped to their feet.
They had the wrong hats on. Stanley’s derby made the larger man look like a tulip bulb. The large derby covered Stanley down to his chin. He looked like a thumbtack.
The large man grabbed the hat away and threw Stanley’s derby to the ground.
“MMMMMM-MMMMMM-MMMMM!” said the large man.
Stanley retrieved his hat. “But Ollie . . .” he said, then began whimpering. His hat was broken.
Suddenly Stanley pulled Ollie’s hat off and stomped it. Ollie did another slow burn, then turned and ripped off Stanley’s tie.
Stanley kicked Ollie in the shin. The large man jumped around and punched Stanley in the kneecap.
A car stopped, and the driver jumped out to see what the trouble was.
Ollie kicked him in the shin. He ripped off Stanley’s coat.
Twenty minutes later, Stanley and Ollie were looking down from a hill. A thousand people were milling around on the turnpike below, tearing each other’s cars to pieces. Parts of trucks and motorcycles littered the roadway. The two watched a policeman pull up. He jumped out and yelled through a bullhorn to the people, too far away for the two men to hear what he said.
As one, the crowd jumped him, and pieces of police car began to bounce off the blacktop.
Ollie dusted off his clothing as meticulously as possible. His and Stanley’s clothes consisted of torn underwear and crushed derby hats.
“That’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us in, Stanley,” he said. He looked north.
“And it looks like it shall soon snow. Mmmm-mmmm-mmmm!”
They went over the hill as the wail of sirens began to fill the air.
* * *
“Hello, a-Central, givva me Heaven. ETcumspiri 220.”
The switchboard hummed and crackled. Sparks leaped off the receiver of the public phone booth in the roadside park. Arthur did a back flip and jumped behind a trashcan.
The sun was out, though snow was still on the ground. It was a cold February day, and they were the only people in the park.
The noise died down at the other end and Leonard said:
“Hallo, Boss! Hey, Boss! We doin’-a like you tell us, but you no send us to the right place. You no send us to Iowa. You send us to Idaho, where they grow the patooties.”
Arthur came up beside his brother and listened. He honked his horn.
On the other end of the line, Rufus T. Quackenbush spoke:
“Is that a goose with you, or do you have a cold?”
“Oh, no, Boss. You funnin’-a me. That’s-a Bagatelle.”
“Then who are you?” asked Quackenbush.
“Oh, you know who this is. I gives you three guesses.”
“Three guesses, huh? Hmmmm, let’s see . . . you’re not Babe Ruth, are you?”
“Hah, Boss. Babe Ruth, that’s-a chocolate bar.”
“Hmmm. You’re not Demosthenes, are you?”
“Nah, Boss. Demosthenes can do is bend in the middle of your leg.”
“I should have known,” said Quackenbush. “This is Rampolini, isn’t it?”
“You got it, Boss.”
Arthur whistled and clapped his hands in the background.
“Is that a hamster with you, Rampolini?”
“Do-a hamsters whistle, Boss?”
“Only when brought to a boil,” said Quackenbush.
“Ahh, you too good-a for me, Boss!”
“I know. And if I weren’t too good for you, I wouldn’t be good enough for anybody. Which is more than I can say for you.”
“Did-a we wake you up, Boss?”
“No, to be perfectly honest, I had to get up to answer the phone anyway. What do you want?”
“Like I said, Boss Man, you put us inna wrong place. We no inna Iowa. We inna Idaho.”
“That’s out of the Bronx, isn’t it? What should I do about it?”
“Well-a, we don’t know. Even if-a we did, we know we can’t-a do it anyway, because we ain’t there. An if-a we was, we couldn’t get it done no ways.”
“How do you know that?”
“Did-a you ever see one of our pictures, Boss?”
There was a pause. “I see what you mean,” said Quackenbush.
“Why for you send-a us, anyway? We was-a sleep, an then we inna Idaho!”
“I looked at my calendar this morning. One of the dates was circled. And it didn’t have pits, either. Anyway, I just remembered that something very important shouldn’t take place today.”
“What’s-a that got to do with us two?”
“Well . . . I know it’s a little late, but I really would appreciate it if you two could manage to stop it.”
“What’s-a gonna happen if we don’t?”
“Uh, ha ha. Oh, small thing, really. The Universe’ll come to an end several million years too soon. A nice boy like you wouldn’t want that, would you? Of course not!”
“What for I care the Universe’ll come to an end? We-a work for Paramount.”
“No, no. Not the studio. The big one!”
“M-a GM?”
“No. The Universe. All that stuff out there. Look around you.”
“You mean-a Idaho?”
“No, no, Rampolini. Everything will end soon, too soon. You may not be concerned. A couple of million years is nothing to somebody like you. But what about me? I’m leasing this office, you know?”
“Why-a us?”
“I should have sent someone earlier, but I’ve . . . I’ve been so terrible busy. I was having a pedicure, you see, and the time just flew by.”
“What-a do the two of us do to-a stop this?”
“Oh, I just know you’ll think of something. And you’ll both be happy to know I’m sending you lots of help.”
“Is this help any good, Boss?”
“I don’t know if they’re any good,” said Quackenbush. “But they’re cheap.”
“What-a we do inna meantime?”
“Be mean, like everybody else.”
“Nah, nah. (That’s-a really good one, Boss.) I mean, about-a the thing?”
“Well, I’d suggest you get to Iowa. Then give me another call.”
“But what iffa you no there?”
“Well, my secretary will take the message.”
“Ah, Boss, if-a you no there, you’re secretary’s-a no gonna be there neither.”
“Hmmm. I guess you’re right. Well, why don’t you give me the message now, and I’ll give it to my secretary. Then I’ll give her the answer, and she can call you when you get to Iowa!”
“Hey, that’s-a good idea, Boss!”
“I thought you’d think so.”
Outside the phone booth, Arthur was lolling his tongue out and banging his head with the side of his hand, trying to keep up with the conversation.
* * *
There were two lumps of snow beside the highway. The snow shook itself, and Stan and Ollie stepped out of it.
“Brr,” said Ollie. “Stanley, we must get to some shelter soon.”
“But I don’t know where any is, Ollie!”
“This is all your fault, Stanley. It’s up to you to find us some clothing and a cheery fireside.”
“But Ollie, I didn’t have any idea we’d end up like this.”
Ollie shivered. “I suppose you’re right, Stanley. It’s not your fault we’re here.”
“I don’t even remember what we were doing before we were on that road this morning, Ollie. Where have you been lately?”
“Oh . . . don’t you remember, Stanley?”
“Not very well, Ollie.”
“Oh,” said Ollie. He looked very tired, very suddenly. “It’s very strange, but neither do I, Stanley.”
The cold was forgotten then, and they were fully clothed in their black suits and derbies. They thought nothing of it, because they were thinking of something else.
“I suppose now we shall really have to hurry and find a ride, Stanley.”
“I know,” said the thin man. “We have to go to Iowa.”
“Yes,” said Ollie, “and our wives will be none the wiser.”
The Iowa they headed for was pulling itself from under a snowstorm which had dumped eleven inches in the last two days. It was bitterly cold there. Crew-cut boys shoveled snow off walks and new ’59 cars so their fathers could get to work. It was almost impossible. Snowplows had been out all night, and many of them were stalled. The National Guard had been called out in some sections and was feeding livestock and rescuing stranded motorists. It was not a day for travel.
At noon, the small town of Cedar Oaks was barely functioning. The gleaming sun brought no heat. But the town stirred inside, underneath the snows which sagged the roofs.
The All-Star Caravan was in town that day. The teenagers had prayed and hoped that the weather would break during the two days of ice. The Caravan was a rock ’n’ roll show that traveled around the country, doing one-night stands.
The show had been advertised for a month: All the businesses around the two high schools and junior highs were covered with the blazing orange posters. They had been since New Year’s Day.
So the kids waited, and built up hopes for it, and almost had them dashed as the weather had closed in.
But Mary Ann Pickett’s mother, who worked the night desk at the Holiday Inn, had called her daughter at eleven the night before: The All-Star Caravan had landed at the airport in the clearing night, and all the singers had checked in.
Mary Ann asked her mother, “What does Donny Bottoms look like?”
Her mother didn’t know. They were all different-looking, and she wasn’t familiar with the singer anyway.
Five minutes after Mary Ann rang off, the word was spreading over Cedar Oaks. The All-Star Caravan was there. Now it could snow forever. Maybe if it did, they would have to stay there, rather than start their USO tour of Alaska.
* * *
Bud and Lou slid and slipped their way over the snows in the truck.
“Watch where you’re going!” said Bud. “Do you have anything to eat?”
“I got some cheese crackers and some LifeSavers, Bud. But we’ll have to divide them, because . . .” His voice took on a little-boy petulance “ . . . because I haven’t had anything to eat in a long time, Bud.”
“Okay, okay. We’ll share. Give me half the cheese crackers. You take these.”
Lou was trying to drive. There was a munching sound.
“Some friend you are,” said Bud. “You have two cheese crackers and I don’t have any.”
Lou coughed. “But, Bud! I just gave you two cheese crackers?”
“Do I look like I have any cheese crackers?” asked Bud, wiping crumbs from his chin.
“Okay,” said Lou. “Have this cheese cracker, Bud. Because you’re my friend, and I want to share.”
Again, the sound of eating filled the cab.
“Look, Lou. I don’t mind you having all the LifeSavers, but can’t you give me half your cheese cracker?”
Lou puffed out his cheeks while watching the road. “But, Bud! I just gave you three cheese crackers!”
“Some friend,” said Bud, looking at the snowbound landscape. “He has a cheese cracker and won’t share with his only friend.”
“Okay! Okay!” said Lou. “Take half this cheese cracker! Take it!”
He drove on.
“Boy . . . ,” said Bud.
Lou took the whole roll of LifeSavers and stuffed them in his mouth, paper and all. He began to choke.
Bud began beating him on the back. The truck swerved across the road, then back on. They continued toward Cedar Oaks, Iowa.
* * *
There were giants in the All-Star Caravan. Donny Bottoms, from Amarillo, Texas; his backup group, the Mosquitoes, most from Amarillo Cooper High School, his old classmates. Then there was Val Ritchie, who’d had one fantastic hit song, which had a beat and created a world all the teenagers wanted to escape to.
The third act, biggest among many more, was a middle-aged man, calling himself The Large Charge. His act was strange, even among that set. He performed with a guitar and a telephone. He pretended to be talking to a girl on the other end of the line. It was billed as a comedy act. Everybody knew what was really involved—The Large Charge was rock ’n’ roll’s first dirty old man. His real name was Elmo Simpson and he came from Bridge City, Texas.
Others on the bill included the Pipettes, three guys and two girls from Stuttgart, Arkansas, who up until three months ago had sung only at church socials; Jimmy Wailon, who was having a hard time deciding whether to sing “Blue Suede Shoes” for the hundredth time, or strike out into country music where the real money was. Plus the Champagnes, who’d had a hit song three years before, and Rip Dover, the show’s M.C.
The All-Star Caravan was the biggest thing that had happened to Cedar Oaks since Bill Haley and the Comets came through a year and a half ago, and one of Haley’s roadmen had been arrested for DWI.
* * *
“What’s-a matter us?” asked Leonard for the fiftieth time that morning. “We really no talka like dis! We was-a grown up mens, with jobs and-a everything.”
Whonka whonka went Arthur sadly, as they walked through the town of Friedersville, Idaho.
Arthur stopped dead, then put his hands in his pockets and began whistling. There was a police car at the corner. It turned onto the road where they walked. And slowed.
Leonard nonchalantly tipped his pointy felt hat forward and put his hands in his pockets.
The cop car stopped.
The two ran into the nearest store. Hadley’s Music Shop.
Arthur ran around behind a set of drums and hid. Leonard sat down at a piano and began to play with one finger, “You’ve Taught Me a New Kind of Love.”
The store manager came from the back room and leaned against the doorjamb, listening.
Arthur saw a harp in the corner, ran to it and began to play. He joined in the song with Leonard.
The two cops came in and watched them play. Leonard was playing with his foot and nose. Arthur was plucking the harp strings with his teeth.
The police shrugged and left.
“Boy, I’m-a tellin’ you,” said Leonard, as he waited for the cops to turn the corner. “Quackenbush, he’s-a messed up dis-a time! Why we gots to do this?” With one hand he was wiping his face, and with the other he was playing as he never had before.
* * *
Donny Bottoms was a scrawny-looking kid from West Texas. He didn’t stand out in a crowd, unless you knew where to look. He had a long neck and an Adam’s apple that stuck out of his collar. He was twenty-four years old and still had acne. But he was one of the hottest new singers around, and the All-Star Caravan was going to be his last road tour for a while. He’d just married his high school sweetheart, a girl named Dottie, and he had not really wanted to come on the tour without her. But she was finishing nurse’s training and could not leave. At two in the afternoon, he and the other members of the Caravan were trying the sound in the Municipal Auditorium.
He and the Mosquitoes ran through a couple of their numbers. Bottoms’ style was unique, even in a field as wild and novelty-eating as rock ’n’ roll. It had a good boogie beat, but Bottoms worked hard with the music, and the Mosquitoes were really good. They turned out a good synthesis of primitive and sophisticated styles.
The main thing they had for them was Donny’s voice. It was high and nasal when he talked, but, singing, that all went away. He had a good range, and he did strange things with his throat.
A critic once said that he dry-humped every syllable till it begged for mercy.
* * *
Val Ritchie had one thing he did well, exactly one: that was a song called “Los Niños.” He’d taken an old Mexican folk song, got a drummer to beat hell out of a conga, and yelled the words over his own screaming guitar.
It was all he did well. He did some of other people’s standards, and some Everly Brothers’ stuff by himself, but he always finished his set with “Los Niños” and it always brought the house down and had them dancing in the aisles.
He was the next-to-last act before Bottoms and the Mosquitoes.
He was a tough act to follow.
But he was always on right before The Large Charge, and he was the toughest act in rock ’n’ roll.
* * *
They had turned the auditorium upside down and had finally found a church key to open a beer for The Large Charge.
Elmo Simpson was dressed, at the sound rehearsal, in a pair of baggy pants, a checked cowboy shirt, and a string tie with a Texas-shaped tie clasp. Tonight, on stage, he would be wearing the same thing.
Elmo’s sound rehearsal consisted of chinging away a few chords, doing the first two bars of “Jailhouse Rock” and then going into his dirty-old-man voice.
His song was called “Hello, Baby!” and he used a prop telephone. He ran through the first two verses, which were him talking in a cultured, decadent, nasty voice, and he had the soundman rolling in his control chair before he finished.
Elmo sweated like a hog. He’d been doing this act for two years; he’d even had to lip-synch it on Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand” a couple of times. He was still nervous, though he could do the routine in his sleep. He was always nervous. He was in his late thirties. Fame had come late to him, and he couldn’t believe it. So he was still nervous.
* * *
Bud and Lou were hurrying west in the panel truck, through snow slides, slush, and stalled cars.
Stan and Ollie had hitched a ride on a Mayflower moving van, against all that company’s policies, and were speeding toward Cedar Oaks from the south-southeast.
Leonard and Arthur, alias Rampolini and Bagatelle, were leaving an Idaho airport in a converted crop duster which hadn’t been flown since the end of the Korean War. It happened like this.
* * *
“We gots to find us a pilot-a to fly us where the Boss wants us,” said Leonard, as they ran onto a small municipal field.
Whonk? asked Arthur.
“We’s gots to find us a pilot, pilot.”
Arthur pulled a saber from the fold of his coat, and putting a black poker chip over his eye, began sword fighting his shadow.
“Notta pirate. Pilot! A man whatsa flies in the aeroplanes,” said Leonard.
A man in coveralls, wearing a WWII surplus aviator’s cloth helmet, walked from the operations room.
“There’s-a one now!” said Leonard. “What’s about we gets him?”
Without a honk, Arthur ran and tackled the flyer.
“What the hell’s the matter with him?” asked the man as Arthur grinned and smiled and pointed.
“You gots to-a excuse him,” said Leonard, pulling his top-hatted brother off him. “He’s-a taken too many vitsamins.”
“Well, keep him away from me!” said the flyer.
“We’s-a gots you a prepositions,” said Leonard, conspiratorially.
“What?”
“A prepositions. You fly-a us to Iowa, anda we no break-a you arms.”
“What’s going on? Is this some kind of gag?”
“No, it’s-a my brother. He’s a very dangerous man. Show him how dangerous you are, Bagatelle.”
Arthur popped his eyes out, squinted his face up into a million rolls of flesh, flared his nostrils, and snorted at each breath.
“Keep him away from me!” said the man. “You oughtn’t to let him out on the streets.”
“He’s-a no listen to me, Bagatelle. Get tough with him.”
Arthur hunched his shoulders, intensified his breathing, stepped up into the pilot’s face.
“No, that’s-a no tough enough. Get really tough with him.”
Arthur squnched over, stood on tiptoe, flared his nostrils until they filled all his face except for the eyes, panted, and passed out for lack of breath.
The pilot ran across the field and into a hangar.
“Hey, wake-a up!” said Leonard. “He’s-a getting the plane ready. Let’s-a go.”
When they got there, the pilot was warming the crop duster up for a preflight check.
Arthur climbed in the aft cockpit, grabbed the stick, started jumping up and down.
“Hey! Get outta there!” yelled the pilot. “I’m gonna call the cops!”
“Hey, Bagatelle. Get-a tough with him again!”
Leonard was climbing into the forward cockpit. Arthur started to get up. His knees hit the controls. The plane lurched.
Leonard fell into the cockpit head first, his feet sticking out.
Arthur sat back down and laughed. He pulled the throttle. The pilot just had time to open the hangar door before the plane roared out, plowed through a snowbank, ricocheted back onto the field, and took off.
It was heading east toward Iowa.
* * *
At three in the afternoon, the rehearsals over, most of the entertainers were back in their rooms at the Holiday Inn. Already the hotel detective had had to chase out several dozen girls and boys who had been roaming up and down the halls looking for members of the All-Star Caravan.
Some of them found Jimmy Wailon in the corridor and were getting his autograph. He had been on the way down the hall, going to meet one of the lady reservation clerks.
“Two of yours is worth one Large Charge,” said one of the girls as he signed her scrapbook.
“What’s that?” he asked, his eyes twinkling. He pushed his cowlick out of his eyes.
“Two of your autographs are worth one of Donny’s,” she said.
“Oh,” he said. “That’s nice.” He scribbled his usual “With Best Wishes to My Friend . . . ,” then asked, “What’s the name, honey?”
“Sarah Sue,” she said. “And please put the date.”
“Sure will, baby. How old are you?”
“I’m eighteen!” she said. All her friends giggled.
“Sure,” he said. “There go!”
He hurried off to the room the lady reservation clerk had gotten for them.
“Did you hear that?” the girl asked behind him as he disappeared around the corner. “He called me ‘honey.’ ”
Jimmy Wailon was smiling long before he got to Room 112.
* * *
Elmo was sitting in Donny’s room with three of the Mosquitoes. Donny had gone to a phone booth to call his wife collect rather than put up with the noise in the room.
“Have another beer, Elmo?” asked Skeeter, the head Mosquito.
“Naw, thanks, Skeeter,” he said. “I won’t be worth a diddly-shit if I do.” Already, Elmo was sweating profusely at the thought of another performance.
“I’ll sure be glad when we get on that tour,” he continued, after a pause. “Though it’ll be colder than a monkey’s ass.”
“Yeh,” said Skeeter. They were watching television. The Millionaire, the daytime reruns, and John Beresford Tipton was telling Mike what to do with the money with his usual corncob-up-the-butt humor. Skeeter was highly interested in the show. He’d had arguments with people many times about whether the show was real or not, or based on some real person. He was sure somewhere there was a John Beresford Tipton, and a Silverstone, and that one of those checks had his name on it.
“Look at that, will you?” asked Skeeter a few minutes later. “He’s giving it to a guy whose kid is dying.”
But Elmo Simpson, The Large Charge, from Bridge City, Texas, was lying on his back, fast asleep. Snores began to form inside his mouth, and every few minutes, one would escape.
* * *
Donny talked to his wife over the phone out in the motel lobby. They told each other how much they missed each other, and Donny asked about the new record of his coming out this week, and Dottie said she wished he’d come home soon rather than going on the tour, and they told each other they loved each other, and he hung up.
Val Ritchie was sitting in a drugstore just down the street, eating a chocolate sundae and wishing he were home, instead of going to do a show tonight, then fly with one or another load of musicians off to Alaska for two weeks for the USO.
He was wearing some of his old clothes and looked out of place in the booth. He thought most northern people overdressed anyway, even kids going to school. I mean, like they were all ready for church or Uncle Fred’s funeral.
He hadn’t been recognized yet, and wouldn’t be. He always looked like a twenty-year-old garage mechanic on a coffee break.
* * *
Bud and Lou swerved to avoid a snowdrift. They had turned onto the giant highway a few miles back and had it almost to themselves. Ice glistened everywhere in the late afternoon sun, blindingly. Soon the sun would fall and it would become pitch black outside.
“How much further is it, Bud?” asked Lou. His stomach was growling.
“I don’t know. It’s around here somewhere. I’m just following what’s-his-name’s orders.”
“Why doesn’t he give better orders, Bud?”
“Because he never worked for Universal.”
* * *
Stan and Ollie did not know what was happening when the doors of the moving van opened and carpets started dropping off the tops of the racks.
Then the van slammed into another vehicle. They felt it through the sides of the truck.
The driver was already out. He was walking toward a small truck with two men in it.
Stan and Ollie climbed out of the back of the Mayflower truck and saw who the other two were.
The four regarded each other, and the truck driver surveyed the damage to the carpets, which was minor.
They helped him load the truck back up; then Stan and Ollie climbed in the small van with Bud and Lou.
“I wonder what Quackenbush is up to now?” asked Bud, as he scrunched himself up with the others. With Lou and Ollie taking up so much room, he and Stan had to share a space hardly big enough for a lap dog. Somehow, they managed.
“I really don’t know,” said Ollie. “He seems quite intent on keeping this thing from happening.”
“But, why us, Bud?” asked Lou. “We been good boys since . . . well, we been good boys. He could have sent so many others.”
“That’s quite all right with me,” said Stanley. “He didn’t seem to want just anybody for this.”
“I don’t know about you two, but Lou and I were sent from Peoria. That’s a long way. What’s this guy got against us?”
“Well, there’s actually no telling,” said Stanley. “Ollie and I have been traveling all day, haven’t we, Ollie?”
“Quite right, Stanley.”
“But what I don’t get,” said Bud, working at his pencil-thin mustache, “is that I remember when all this happened the first time.”
“So do I,” said Stanley.
“But not us two,” said Lou, indicating Ollie and himself, and trying to keep the truck on the road.
“Well, that’s because you two had . . . had . . . left before them. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that he sent us back here to . . . Come to think of it, I don’t understand, either.”
“Or me,” said Lou.
“Quackenbush moves in mysterious ways,” said Bud.
“Right you are,” said Stan.
“Mmmm Mmmmm Mmmmm,” said Ollie.
* * *
By the time they saw they were in the air they also realized the pilot wasn’t aboard.
Leonard was still stuck upside down in the forward cockpit. Arthur managed to fly the plane straight while his brother crawled out and sat upright.
Looping and swirling, they flew on through the late afternoon toward Cedar Oaks.
* * *
The line started forming in front of the doors of the civic auditorium at five, though it was still bitterly cold.
The manager looked outside at 5:15. It was just dark, and there must be a hundred and fifty kids out there already, tickets in hand. He hadn’t been at the sound rehearsal and hadn’t seen the performers. All he knew was what he heard about them: They were the hottest rock and roll musicians since Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry.
* * *
The show went on at 7:00 P.M. as advertised, and it was a complete sellout. The crowd was ready, and when Rip Dover introduced the Champagnes, the people yelled and screamed even at their tired doo-wah act.
Then came Wailon, and they were polite for him, except that they kept yelling “Rock ’n’ roll! Rock ’n’ roll!” and he kept singing “Young Love” and the like.
Then other acts, then Val Ritchie, who jogged his way through several standards and launched into “Los Niños.” He tore the place apart. They wouldn’t let him go, they were dancing in the aisles. He did “Los Niños” until he was hoarse. They dropped the spots on him, finally, and the kids quit screaming. It got quiet. Then there was the sound of a mike being turned on and a voice, greasy in the magnificence, filled the hall:
“Helloooooooooooo, baby!”
* * *
It was long past dark, and the truck swerved down the road, the forms of Stan, Ollie, Bud, and Lou illuminated by the dome light. Bud had a map unfolded in front of the windshield and Ollie’s arms were in Lou’s way.
“It’s here somewhere,” said Bud. “I know it’s here somewhere!”
Overhead was the whining, droning sound of an old aeroplane, sometimes close to the ground, sometimes far above. Every once in a while was a yell of “Watch-a yourself! Watch-a where you go!” and a whonk whonk.
The truck below passed a sign which said:
WELCOME TO CEDAR OAKS
Speed Limit 30 MPH
* * *
After The Large Charge hung up the telephone receiver, and they let him offstage to thunderous ovation, the back curtain parted and there were Donny Bottoms and the Mosquitoes.
And the first song they sang was “Dottie,” the song Bottoms had written for his wife while they were still high school sweethearts. Then “Roller Coaster Days” and “Miss America” and all his classics. And the crowd went crazy and . . .
* * *
The truck roared in the snowy, jampacked parking lot of the auditorium, skidded sideways, wiped out a ’57 cherry-red Merc, and punched out the moon window of a T-Bird. The cops on parking lot duty ran toward the wreck.
Halfway there, they jumped under other cars to get away from the noise.
The noise was that of an airplane going to crash very soon, very close.
At the last second, the sound stopped.
The cops looked up.
An old biplane was sitting still in a parking space in the lot, its propeller still spinning. Two guys in funny clothes were climbing down from it, one whistling and honking to the other, who was trying to get a pointy hat off his ears.
The doors of the truck which had crashed opened, and four guys tumbled out all over each other.
They ran toward the auditorium, and the two from the plane saw them and whistled and ran toward them. They joined halfway across the lot, the six of them, and ran toward the civic hall.
The police were running for them like a berserk football team and then . . .
* * *
The auditorium doors were thrown open by the ushers, lances of light gleamed out on the snow and parked cars, and the mob spilled out onto the concrete and snow, laughing, yelling, pushing, shoving in an effort to get home.
The six running figures melted into the oncoming throng, the police right behind them.
Above the cop whistles and the mob noise was an occasional “Ollie, oh, Ollie!” or “Hey, Bud! Hey, Bud!” or whonk whonk and . . .
* * *
The six made it into the auditorium as the maintenance men were turning out the lights, and they ran up to the manager’s office and inside.
The thin manager was watching TV. He looked up to the six and thought it must be some sort of a publicity stunt.
On TV came the theme music of “You Bet Your Duck.”
“It’s-a Quackenbush!” said Leonard.
The TV show host looked up from his rostrum. “Hi, folks. And tonight what’s the secret woids?” Here a large merganser puppet flopped down and the audience applauded. The show host turned the word card around and lifted his eyebrows, looked at the screen and said:
“That’s right. Tonight, the woids are Inexorable Fate. I knew I should’ve hired someone else. You guys are too late.”
Then he turned to the announcer and asked, “George, who’s our first guest?” as the duck was pulled back overhead on its strings.
The six men tore from the office and out to the parking lot, through the last of the mob. Stan, Ollie, Bud, and Lou jumped in the truck which a wrecker attendant was just connecting to a winch, right under the nose of the astonished police chief.
Arthur and Leonard, whistling and yelling, jumped in the plane, backed it out, and took off after circling the crowded parking lot. They rose into the air to many a loud scream.
The truck and plane headed for the airport.
* * *
The crowd was milling about the airport fence. Inside the barrier, musicians waited to get aboard a DC-3, their instrument cases scattered about the concourse.
The truck with four men in it crashed through the fence, strewing wire and posts to the sides.
It twisted around on its wheels, skidded sideways, almost hitting the musicians, and came to a halt. The four looked like the Keystone Firemen as they climbed out.
There was a roar in the air, and the biplane came out of the runway lights, landed, and taxied to a stop less than an inch from the nose of the passenger plane.
“We not-a too late! We not-a too late!” yelled Leonard, as he climbed down. “Arthur, get tough with-a that plane. Don’t let it take off!”
Arthur climbed to the front of the crop duster and repeated the facial expressions he’d gone through earlier with the pilot. This time at the frightened pilot of the DC-3, through the windshield.
Leonard, Bud, Lou, Stan, and Ollie ran to the musicians and found Wailon.
“Where’s Bottoms?” asked Bud.
“Huh?” asked Jimmy Wailon, still a little distraught by the skidding truck and the aeroplane. “Bottoms? Bottoms left on the first plane.”
“The first plane?” asked Ollie. “The first aeroplane?”
“Uh, yeah. Simpson and Ritchie were already on. Donny wanted to wait for this one, but I gave him my seat. I’m waiting for someone.” He looked at them; they had not moved. “I gave him my seat on the first plane,” he said. Then he looked them over in the dim lights. “You friends of his?”
“No,” said Stanley, “but I’m sure we’ll be seeing him again very soon.”
Overhead, the plane which had taken off a few minutes before circled and headed northwest for Alaska.
They listened to it fade in the distance.
Whonk went Arthur.
* * *
They drove back through the dark February night, all six of them jammed into the seat and the small back compartment. After they heard the news for the first time, they turned the radio down and talked about the old days.
“This fellow Quackenbush,” asked Ollie. “Is he in the habit of doing things such as this?”
“Ah, the Boss? There’s-a no tellin’ what the boss man willa do!”
“He must not be a nice man,” said Lou.
“Oh, he’s probably all right,” said Bud. “He just has a mind like a producer.”
“A contradiction in terms,” said Stanley.
“You’re so right,” said Ollie.
* * *
“Pardon me,” said the hitchhiker for whom they stopped. “Could you fellows find it in your hearts to give me a ride? I feel a bit weary after the affairs of the day, and should like to nestle in the arms of Morpheus for a short while.”
“Sure,” said Lou. “Hop in.”
“Ah yes,” said the rotund hitchhiker in the beaver hat. “Been chasing about the interior of this state all day. Some fool errand, yes indeed. Reminds me of the time on safari in Afghanistan . . .” He looked at the six men, leaned forward, tapping a deck of cards with his gloved hands. “Would any of you gentlemen be interested in a little game of chance?”
“No thanks,” said Bud. “You wouldn’t like the way I play.”
* * *
They drove through the night. They didn’t need to stop for the next hitchhiker, because they knew him. They saw him in the headlights, on the railroad tracks beside the road. He was kicking a broken-down locomotive. He came down the embankment, stood beside the road as they bore down on him.
He was dressed in a straw hat, a vest, and a pair of tight pants. He wore the same countenance all the time, a great stone face.
The truck came roaring down on him, and was even with him, and was almost by, when he reached out with one hand and grabbed the back door handle and with the other clamped his straw hat to his head.
His feet flew up off the pavement and for a second he was parallel to the ground; then he pulled himself into the spare tire holder and curled up asleep.
He had never changed expression.
* * *
Over the hill went the eight men, some of them talking, some dozing, toward the dawn. Just before the truck went out of sight there was a sound, so high, so thin it did not carry well.
It went honk honk.