Ecstasy (9 page)

After what had happened to Shaun Kirtz, I have to say I half expected to find exactly what I found—a crowd gathered around
the prostrate body of a teenager. That being said, I’ll admit to being intensely surprised that, for the second time in two
days, it was someone I knew.

Unlike with Shaun, I recognized him instantly; chalk it up to the oversize sideburns that had been Billy’s defining feature.
Even though his face was obscured by the paramedic who was trying to revive him, the sight of one of those bushy parentheses
told me exactly who it was.

There’s not much lighting at the Jaspersburg Fairgrounds, and the scene was being illuminated by a combination of headlights,
flashlights, and torches that an enterprising few had brought over from the campgrounds. It added up to create a surreal mood,
with some places as bright as Fenway Park while others were pitch black, the spots in between flickering in and out of focus
according to the whim of the flames and the motion of people’s wrists.

I stood there gaping at the body, one hand over my mouth and the other clamped around my notebook. I knew I should snap out
of it, that I should act like a reporter and do some reporting. But for the life of me, I couldn’t move. For some reason,
why I couldn’t tell you, it struck me that between them Shaun and Billy had been on the planet a grand total of thirty-five
years—roughly the age of most of my drinking buddies. I hadn’t particularly liked either one of them, mostly because I have
a low tolerance for clueless teenage boys. And now neither one of them would ever be anything else.

A
S SOON AS THE FIRST
orange strips of daylight hit the horizon, I called Cody. Being the virtuous sort who actually exercises before work (we
don’t have this in common), he was already awake. I told him about all the fun I’d been having at Melting Rock, and the first
thing he wanted to know was just why the hell I hadn’t called him sooner. I mumbled something about being busy filing stories,
which was only marginally accurate. The truth was that although I’d been dying for some boyfriendly sympathy, I was also sick
of blubbering to him every time I ran into something nasty.

“So you actually talked to these kids?” he was saying. “You mean
both
of them?”

“Yeah, in that story on their bunch of friends I did for the Thursday paper.”

“You want to tell me what you saw?”

“I already told you,” I said. “Two dead kids. Consecutively.”

“Yeah, but you and I both know there are bodies and there are bodies.”

“True.”

“And?”

“And…”I thought about it for a minute. “All things considered, I guess this wasn’t so bad.”

“Then tell me.”

“First kid was worse. Eyes were still open and everything. This girl was with him—she was completely freaked out. Seeing her
was almost worse than seeing him, if you can believe it.”

“I can believe a lot of things.”

“Name’s Cindy. Youngest in the bunch.”

“How’s she doing?”

“Not so good. She ended up in the hospital on sedation.”

Deep sigh. “Goddamn self-destructive idiots.”

“The follies of youth, I guess.”

“Hey, you and I were both teenagers once, and we managed not to take drugs and die.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like they deserved what they got. Being young and stupid isn’t a capital crime.”

“For them it was.”

I thought about it for a while. “True enough.”

“Listen, baby, you want to get the hell out of there? Because if you want, the dogs and I can come get you in twenty minutes.”

“That’s extremely sweet, and completely not necessary. I’m fine, really. And anyway, I’ll be home tomorrow.”

“Good.”

“Listen,” I said, “do you know this guy Steve Stilwell?”

“The J-burg chief? Sure.”

“Nice guy?”

“Yeah. Solid. Why?”

“I just met him today…I mean yesterday. His daughter was tight with the guys who died.”

“Rough.”

“Anyway, she was telling me what a fascist her dad is, but when he showed up, she went running for him. It was kind of sweet,
actually.”

“Teenagers are an up-and-down proposition.”

“How would you know?”

“I arrest a lot of them.”

“Oh. So, do you like Chief Stilwell? Is he, you know, a buddy of yours?”

“Not like I’d go out for a beer with the guy, but I’ve met him a few times.”

“What can you tell me about him?”

“Not much. Seems like a decent sort. Can’t say what kind of cop he is. Wife died a while back—about five or six years ago,
I think. Did a hitch in the army, then served in the Gulf as a reservist. We talked about that a while.”

“The Gulf War?”

“Yeah.”

“What about it?”

“Just comparing notes.”

“You mean you were there?”

“Um…yeah.”

“Jesus. How come you never told me?”

“You never asked.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Why is that, anyway?”

“I…Maybe I didn’t want to know.”

“You asked me once if I ever killed anybody.”

“That’s true.”

“And I told you I did. In the navy and on the force.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, where did you think I did it? Basic training?”

“Fine. Have you been in any other wars you’d like to mention?”

“Nothing you would’ve seen on CNN.”

“Christ, Cody, this is the weirdest conversation I’ve ever had.”

“No offense, baby,” he said, “but I kind of doubt that.”

B
Y TEN O’CLOCK
the word had come down. The Melting Rock Music Festival was over—not forever, mind you, but definitely for this year. By
order of the Jaspersburg police, the bands were to pack up their instruments, the campers to unstake their tents, and the
vendors to empty their fryers. The resulting atmosphere was how I’d imagine a retreating army would look, picking up and moving
away without an ounce of joy, and an overarching sense that they’d been robbed.

The festival’s organizers seemed to take it fairly well; when I interviewed Jo Mingle about the situation, she seemed much
more worried about the deaths of two teenagers than the loss of one day of Melting Rock.

“This is totally out of control,” she said, looking so haggard and drawn as to be in danger of premature labor. “This place
has gotten so goddamn far out of control…. Melting Rock just isn’t what it used to be.”

“What did it used to be?”

“Something else.”

She turned her back on me and resumed packing up more crates of unsold merchandise—bright green T-shirts with dissolving musical
notes on the front, compilation CDs of festival regulars entitled
Melting Rock Mojo.

I was about to walk away, then changed my mind. “No, really,” I said, coming around to her spherical front. “I want to know.
What was it like?”

She took a deep breath, exhaled, and put down the stack of T-shirts. The back turned out to say
MELTING ROCK
—
LUCKY
#13.

“You never came before? Back in the day?”

“Just once, five years ago, and not for very long.”

“Then I’m not sure I can explain it right,” she said. “The first year it was, like, maybe a hundred people. Somebody brought
an Airstream and the bands set up in front of it and that was the stage. The food was free, just this guy who baked a ton
of bread and gave it all away. It was like… Man, it was like
heaven.
I know you’re gonna think that’s a bunch of crap, but it’s true. Everybody was just so mellow, you know? People just wanted
to hear music and have a good time.”

“So what happened?”

“I don’t know. I guess maybe it was inevitable, right? Every year more and more people showed up, and since it got bigger
and bigger, it had to get really
organized
—parking permits and vending licenses and liability insurance and sales tax, all that junk. Past couple of years, it hasn’t
really seemed like Melting Rock anymore. I mean, it’s still better than most festivals—way better than those goddamn rip-off
Woodstocks they did—but I know a bunch of people from the old days who won’t even come anymore.”

“Because it got too big and… what? Establishment?”

“Yeah, that, and…” She reoriented her attention somewhere over my shoulder, her face breaking into a wide smile. “Hey, babe.”

I turned around, and there was the drummer from Stumpy the Salamander. Up close, he looked even taller and scrawnier than
he had onstage—a great, tattooed arachnid of a person with an air of such studied casualness, I wondered if he had a B.A.
in nonchalance.

The guy came over and gave Jo a sloppy whopper of a kiss, their bodies at an odd angle because of her protruding belly. When
they came up for air, she said, “Babe, this is Alex from the newspaper. Alex, this is Trike Ford, my life partner. He’s the
drummer for Stumpy.”

I stuck out my hand. “I caught part of your show.”

“Cool,” he said, then kissed Jo again. “Hey, I gotta go help the guys pack up.”

“But…I thought you were gonna take the chicklet,” she said, gesturing toward the infant sitting in a shaded baby seat.

“Sorry, babe,” he said. “Busy.”

With that, he headed off toward the main stage. If Jo was upset, she didn’t show it.

“Um, you were saying before, about the festival getting to be too big…?”

She shook her head, either at Trike or at Melting Rock in general. “Christ, I’m gonna sound like my dad, but these kids that
come now…I mean, I was their age when Melting Rock started, but we just had a whole different attitude. We just kind of went
with the flow, you know? But these kids, it’s like they’re on a mission or something. Like they gotta do the fest to the nth
degree—get no sleep and party till they drop—” She clamped a hand over her mouth. “I can’t believe I just said that.”

“It’s okay. I know what you meant.”

“I guess what I’m trying to say is, the beauty of Melting Rock used to be that it was so low-key. People did their own thing,
hung out, soaked up the sound, you know? Nobody had anything to prove. Nobody had any kind of agenda. They just wanted to
hang out and have a good time and hear good music.”

“And you don’t think it’s like that anymore?”

“For some people it is. But for a lot of them, it’s all about ‘Where did you get to camp? Did you get in Main? How much goddamn
jewelry did you sell? How many times did you get fucked up?’ ” She shook her head and settled heavily on a milk crate, which
disappeared beneath her maternal bulk. “I probably sound like a grumpy old lady, don’t I? But I’ll tell you, it makes me sad.
It really does.”

“How do you think what happened is going to affect next year?”

Heavy sigh. “Next year. Good question. Tell you the truth, I can’t even think about it. And what’s more,” she said, “I can’t
even
think
about thinking about it.”

I left her there packing up official Melting Rock water bottles (five dollars a pop) and went in search of more color for
my story on the festival’s premature end. If anybody was happy about it, I couldn’t find them. I interviewed a dejected couple
who’d come all the way from Myrtle Beach for the Melting Rock experience, and a homegrown Gabriel band whose festival debut
had lasted exactly one set, and a portly potato-pancake vendor who complained bitterly of all the inventory he was going to
be stuck with. (“Ya want ’em?” he said, pointing to a mountainous vat of shredded spuds. “They’re yours.”)

Although the assembled masses seemed disinclined to go anywhere fast, the Jaspersburg cops were having none of it. The festival
was over, and everyone was expected to get out of Dodge posthaste. A few Yuppie types tried to argue that they’d paid for
their campsite through Sunday afternoon and weren’t about to be displaced, whereupon they were directed to the fine print
in the program that said there’d be no refunds if the festival were canceled in case of “emergency, inclement weather, or
act of God.”

The deaths of Shaun Kirtz and Billy Halpern had also mobilized the Walden County Health Department, not to mention a cadre
of other local social-service groups dedicated to saving adolescents from themselves. They wandered the fairgrounds distributing
flyers and buttonholing people as they hauled their belongings to their cars, the messages varying according to the agency’s
political bent, from “Don’t take drugs” to “Don’t take drugs from people you don’t know real well.”

I was getting quotes from one of the shaggy-haired members of Unitarians for Social Sanity when somebody grabbed me by the
elbow. It turned out to be Lauren Potter, and she looked like hell. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her moon-shaped face was
stained with tears. When she spoke, she sounded so manic I thought the Unitarian was going to perform an intervention right
then and there.

“Have you seen him?” she asked.

“Seen who?”

“
Tom.
Have you seen Tom? It’s been days. It’s been two days. I’ve been looking for him for two days. Have you seen him anyplace?
Because he isn’t home. I called his folks and they haven’t seen him since he left with us. Since he left to come here. And
I’ve been looking for him everywhere….”

She seemed about to walk off, so I grabbed her by the shoulders. “Hold on a sec. Calm down, okay? Try and breathe—”

“But I can’t find him. I’ve been looking since before… since before Shaun. …And now there’s Billy and I still can’t—”

“Wait. Just listen to me for a minute. When’s the last time you saw him?”

Both her eyes went off to the left, like she was trying to access the information from a balky database. “I…Wednesday night.”

“And where was he going then?”

“His tent. Everybody split and he went off by himself, and now I can’t find him anywhere. I’ve been looking and asking around
to everybody I could—”

“Is his stuff still in his tent?”

“I…I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“It’s new, and I don’t know what it looks like.”

“Don’t his parents?”

“No, I…They’re not really into outdoor stuff. I asked them, but they weren’t even sure what color it was.”