A Song to Die For (25 page)

He took a step closer to the window to find the rest of the band sprawled across the deck. Trusty Joe's head was actually hanging over the edge. “Oh. I guess I forgot about them, too.”

Lindsay shook her head. “Get dressed. I'll give you a ride back to your van at the bus yard.”

“Right. Oh, that was Luster on the phone. Band meeting at four o'clock.”

“I could hear his million-dollar voice, Creed, honey. He said
five
.”

Creed grinned at her. “So he did.” He shrugged sheepishly.

“I'm gonna sneak past the aftermath. Meet you in the car.” She winked and left.

*   *   *

Pulling up to Luster's ranch house at five, the boys in the band riding with him in the Good Times van, Creed was surprised, and a little confused, to find a certain Carmen Ghia parked next to the bus and Luster's pickup. Kathy Music was here. He liked that idea. But hey, she wasn't one of those girls who went for older guys, was she? You don't think Luster … He decided not to jump to conclusions, and not to look too interested just yet.

The second perplexing vehicle in the drive was the government-issued sedan that one Sid Larue drove. What the hell was going on?

The band members slowly unfolded from the van, still nursing hangovers. Trusty Joe veered toward the stables. “I'm gonna check on Baldy,” he mumbled.

Creed, Metro, and Tump ambled slowly toward the house.

“Where's Lindsay?” Tump asked, looking around for her Impala.

“Runnin' late, as usual,” Creed replied.

“What happened to her last night?” Tump said.

“She went home. Y'all about ready for some hair of the dog?” Creed suggested, changing the subject.

“Couldn't make me feel much worse,” Tump admitted.

“What does that mean?” Metro asked. “Hair of the dog?”

“Kid, you got a lot to learn,” Tump said. “Come on. I'll explain it to you.”

Creed smelled the aroma of barbecue on the wind, and suggested they walk around back to the pit. They found Luster, Sid, and Kathy Music conversing over Texas Pride beers while Luster flipped steaks on the grill. Luster greeted the band members like old friends, showed them the beer cooler.

“Ain't it a beautiful afternoon?” he said, obviously in high spirits.

Creed smiled strangely at Kathy, grateful that he was wearing shades to cover his bloodshot eyes. “Pleasant surprise to find you here.”

“I'll explain when everybody arrives,” she said. “Let's see, we're waiting on Lindsay and … Trusty Joe?”

About that time, Trusty Joe rode by, bareback, on Ol' Baldy, the two of them loping along the creek bank as if they had done so every day for years.

“Just Lindsay. As usual.”

He sat down across from Kathy and Sid at the backyard picnic table. He couldn't help noticing that Tump and Metro went straight to the beer cooler, Tump still explaining the hair of the dog comment.

“So, the dog bites you,” Metro was saying, “and you get some hair off that dog, and put it on the bite? Sounds like something my
abuela
would do. She's a
curandera.
”

Tump pulled the tab on his beer. “It's just a saying, kid. It has nothing to do with an actual dog. It means that if you're hung over, you drink whatever it was that … Oh, never mind. I guess your grandma knows best.”

*   *   *

An hour later, Creed's hangover and attitude having improved, Lindsay finally arrived. Luster found a bottle of wine and poured her a glass. Creed still had not had much time to talk to Kathy. Sid Larue had pulled her aside to go over some paperwork—ledger books and other sundry notes. It looked as if Kathy had been recruited to help with the Luster Burnett comeback in some capacity, and it was clear that Larue was agreeable to that development. Creed caught a few words of their conversation, and decided that Kathy was neither a librarian nor a lawyer, but an accountant.

As twilight fell, Luster rang a triangular iron dinner bell and ordered his guests to sit at the picnic table. He served steaks, baked potatoes, salad, and cornbread. As the diners carved meat and began to eat, the conversation predictably evaporated.

“Sure got quiet,” Luster commented.

Trusty Joe swallowed. “Not to me. I hear all kinds of noises in my head. Horns honking and people screaming, guns shooting, music, dogs barking…” He shoved another bite of rare steak into his mouth.

Tump patted him on the shoulder. “That explains a lot.”

After dinner, Kathy uncovered a buttermilk pie she had brought with her. Creed took a bite. “Wow,” he said. “Did you make this?”

Kathy shrugged modestly. “Yeah, it's easy.”

“This reminds me of my grandma's buttermilk pie.”

“Thank you!” she sang.

Luster found some whiskey in the house, and dumped more beer and ice into the cooler. To Creed, the band meeting seemed to have turned into nothing more than a dinner-and-drinking party. Still, after the morale-busting gig last night, and the ass chewing on the bus, he saw no harm. Maybe this was Luster's way of smoothing things over.

Luster sat at the end of the picnic table—silent for a change—seemingly amused by the conversations of the band members as they continued to knock back the beers, tossing the cans into a pile to be picked up later. Like Luster, Creed listened to the conversation stray all over the place, a vehicle out of control in a big, muddy pasture. Somehow, Trusty Joe and Tump got onto some nasty limericks they had learned.

“I know one,” Metro said. “My name is Pancho. I live on the rancho. I make-ee five dollars a day. I go to see Lucy. She geeve me some pooh-see. And take-ee my five dollars away.”

“That's not really even a limerick,” Trusty Joe said.

“Not only that,” Lindsay complained, “it's racist. Why would you disparage your own culture like that?”

Metro shrugged. “It's just a little joke.”

“There's a female version,” Tump said. “It goes like this: My name is Lula. I work at the school-la. I make-ee five dollars a day. I go to see Rex. He give me some sex. And take my five dollars away.”

Metro laughed so hard that he sprayed beer across the patio.

Lindsay gasped. “This is pitiful, to perpetuate these racial stereotypes in this day and age. If you were a minority, Tump, you wouldn't think it so funny.”

“I'm more of a minority than anybody in the band,” Tump assured her. “I'm Indian.”

“Dot-head or feather-head?” Trusty Joe asked.

Tump frowned at him. “Cherokee.”

“Full blood?” Lindsay asked.

Tump shrugged. “There were probably a couple of pale faces in the woodpile a generation or so back. I'm mostly Indian.”

“Me, too,
tambien
,” Metro claimed.

“You're Mexican,” Trusty Joe argued. “You ain't Indian.”

“Hey, do I look
puro
Spanish? I got
Indio
blood. Mayan. My ancestors used to sacrifice virgins, man.”

“We got somethin' in common then,” Tump said. “I've sacrificed a few virginities in my time, too.”

“Lord, have mercy,” Lindsay said. “No wonder none of you have girlfriends.”

“I've got girlfriends!” Metro insisted. “A bunch of them, down in the Valley.”

“Yeah, across the border in Boy's Town,” Tump said.

Metro merely shrugged. “That's the best kind. They're cheaper.”

“No doubt,” Tump agreed.

“Good heavens!” Lindsay railed. “What about you, Creed?”

Taken by surprise, Creed was glad darkness had fallen. He doubted the band could see him blush from the living room light shining out through the windows. “Me? Shoppin' around.”

“Uh-huh,” Lindsay purred. “I've seen you operate, heartthrob. The groupies always dig the guitar player, right?”

“I wouldn't know. I've been in a slump lately.”

Lindsay chuckled. “What qualifies as a slump to you? A couple of nights?”

“For starters.” He tried warning Lindsay off with a glare but found her cool stare toying with him. “What about you, Trusty?” he said, deflecting the attention away from himself. “You got a girl?”

Trusty burst into tears. “My wife left me! I'm going through a divorce.” He buried his face in his hands and sobbed.

“Oh, poor baby,” Lindsay said, genuinely sympathetic. She got up to comfort him, putting an arm around his shoulders.

“That explains the cryin',” Luster said, finally joining the conversation. “What about the pukin'?”

“I have a spastic colon!” Trusty replied, mumbling into his palms.

Lindsay grimaced, took her arm off of his shoulder, and moved back to her former seat across the table.

 

24

CHAPTER

After a good cry, Trusty Joe rallied, and suggested they should help Luster clean up the table and the dishes.

“Good idea,” Luster said. “Then we'll gather in the living room and convene this band meeting.”

Half an hour later, with the band plus Sid and Kathy seated on the large, burgundy-colored, crushed-velour couch facing the fireplace, Luster stood before them, a fresh can of Old Milwaukee in his hand and a good oak fire crackling behind him.

“First of all,” he began, “I want to apologize for my little hissy fit in the bus last night. It was our first real gig. I shouldn't have expected so much of you. We've only had a handful of rehearsals. I overreacted, and I'm sorry. Nobody's perfect, right?”

Creed, like the rest of the listeners, just stared up at him.

“Right?” Luster demanded.

“Right,” Creed said, along with everyone else on the couch.

“So, you forgive me. Right?”

“Right.”

“All right. Forgiveness is important. It's everything. Especially in a band. Especially in
this
band.” He began to chuckle. “I mean, look at us, for Christ's sake! We're all imperfect. Lindsay, you're never on time. Metro, you're just a kid. You don't have a clue. Trusty's either blubberin' or pukin' half the time. And I'm sure Tump has a personality somewhere behind those shades. And Creed … Well, you've got to admit he's well-nigh perfect, like me. But hell, that's more aggravating than being all screwed up, like the rest of y'all. Nobody likes a near-perfect son-of-a-bitch!”

He paused to take a long gulp from his beer can. “I mean, we are
somethin'
, ain't we? Look at us. We got a colored gal, a Meskin kid, a Wild Indian, and three white crackers.”

“I prefer the term
honky
, if you're going to go the
colored
route,” Lindsay warned.

Luster continued: “Metro thinks I'm old enough to be his great-grandfather, and the rest of you are scattered in between me and Metro. So, we got all ages, all these races, all three genders, and I'm afraid to even get into religion and politics.”

“What do you mean
three
genders?” Trusty Joe asked.

“Just making sure you're paying attention. Here's my point: If it wasn't for this band, would we ever sit down to supper together? Would we even say howdy to one another on the street? That's the power of music. It brings people together, allows us to set our differences aside. It's important. So…” He took another drink of his beer and sat down on the fireplace hearth.

“Driving the bus home last night, I had an epiphany. I've been looking at this whole thing wrong. I've been thinking it's all about
my
comeback,
my
rebirth,
my
resurrection.
Me, me, me.
That's bullshit. What I did in the past is done. Everything has changed now. The business is completely different. The fans are younger. The sound is new. This isn't a rebirth, it's a whole new conception. This is an emergence. An emergency emergence! This is a rare and wonderful opportunity to create something original. And so, it's not about me anymore. It's about
us
.
Our
band.
Our
sound.
Our
music.”

The couch crew stared as Luster guzzled the rest of his beer.

Trusty Joe broke the silence. “You mean, we're not going to play your songs anymore?”

“Well, let's not get nutty,” Luster said. “Of course we're going to play my songs. They're classics. They're great. But we don't have to play 'em just like the old forty-fives and seventy-eights anymore. We can let 'em evolve—maybe put some of this new progressive-country flare to 'em. Change a tempo, add some harmonies. Who knows? We'll rearrange, re-produce. Let 'em breathe!”

“Let's play some reggae, man!” Metro said. “Like Bob Marley doin' Dylan!”

Tump elbowed him. “Easy, kid.”

“Reggae?” Luster snorted. “Maybe. Who knows? Now listen, there's something else, too. Allow me to introduce our new manager, Kathy Music.”

Kathy rose from the couch and stepped in front of the fireplace. “Hi,” she said. “My name's Kathy Music. It really is. It's German. But I don't have any musical talent, like the rest of you. Okay … I don't even know where to start.” She looked at Luster.

“Start with yesterday.”

She nodded. “Okay. I'm an accountant. Or at least I was until yesterday, when I got my pink slip.”

“Pink what?” Metro asked.

“I got laid off.”

“Groovy!” Metro said, approvingly.

“Laid
off
,” Tump explained, “not laid. She got fired, terminated.”

“Made redundant, as they say in England,” Trusty Joe added.

“Would y'all shut up and let the lady talk?” Luster ordered.

“Okay,” Kathy said. “So, I was bummed. Really bummed. Then I heard about the concert last night, so I went to the show, and wow! So, I went to the bus to buy an album, but Luster said he didn't have any for sale. Oh, my God! I couldn't believe it! You should have product for sale. This band should be playing large venues, not smoky little dives. So, it occurred to me that I have a three-month severance package from my firm. So, I've got three months to make this band profitable. If I can make the band make money, and begin paying back the I.R.S. what Luster owes, Luster said I can stay on full-time as manager!” Her cute little shrug said,
Well, what do y'all think?