Heartland (27 page)

“You're killing me,” JayJay protested.

“Exactly.” Britt pointed at the empty screen. “This is what they'll judge us on. If they pull the plug, it will be because of this. Because of
you
.”

“You can't let anybody else see this mess.” JayJay was pleading now. “I've let everybody down. Don't make it worse.”

Britt's gaze had the acute precision of a judge passing sentence. “From this moment on, you'll give me the best you can?”

“Count on it.”

Britt turned to Derek and said, “As of now, this tape does not exist. We're starting fresh. All we've done so far is just rehearse.”

JayJay did not notice his sweat bath until then. “Thanks, Britt. A lot.”

Britt asked Peter, “You told him yet?”

“I was just going to.”

“There's a lot riding on you, JayJay. A lot of jobs, a lot of people's hopes. Don't let us down.”

They were out of the hotel and a hundred yards down the sidewalk leading toward town before JayJay managed, “I've just been skinned by a real pro.”

“You need to sit down?”

“No, better if I walk it off.” He shook his head in painful admiration. “He didn't raise his voice. Didn't say a single bad word or need more than ninety seconds. But he roasted me right down to a crispy fritter.”

“The first time I got on his wrong side, I had nightmares for a week.” Peter shook his head at the memory. “It was less than a month after the first writer on the series had retired. My chance at a career, dead and gone after twenty-two days. The next time I saw him, it was like nothing happened. But he knew and I knew. Either I performed to his expectations, or I was toast.”

The admission drew JayJay up tighter and closed the gap between them. They were just two journeymen, both of whom had shared the lash. “Where are we headed?”

“There's somebody I want you to meet.” Peter raised his face to the sun and added, “I've got a problem. Actually, two. Britt said it was my choice whether I talk it over. I still don't know what to do.”

“Whatever you think is right by me.”

“I'm not happy with the romance angle between you and Kelly.”

“Neither is she.” JayJay raised his hand before Peter could speak. “Sorry. It just slipped out.”

“The later scenes work okay. But I need a better opener.”

“Why ask me? I'm just the green kid who's still limping from where the boss winged me.”

“I just thought . . . You know, you guys . . .” Peter sighed. “Never mind.”

They walked a ways in silence. JayJay found himself smiling.

“What is it?”

“Kelly might just finish the job Britt's started if I tell you.”

“How bad can it be?”

“It ain't bad at all, from where I'm standing. But this is a lady we're dealing with.”

Peter walked and watched and waited. Not asking, at least in words.

“Okay. Here's the deal. The lady can just plain sing.”

Peter frowned. “I don't remember seeing anything about that in her sheet.”

“Which means she ain't gonna be happy to hear I'm talking about it.” JayJay recounted the night at Goody's. “I mean to tell you, she had that crowd on their feet in a heartbeat. Took her four more songs before they'd let her climb down off the stage.”

“I can use this, JayJay.” Peter started reading script in the sunwashed sidewalk. “Maybe set it at an outdoor stage, a county fair or something. We'll see.”

“I probably just signed my own death warrant.”

“No, no. You did right.” More definite now. “What kind of music?”

“Christian with an edge. She did one number, a love song between God and man. Even the waiters stopped moving around. The place plain froze up. When she finished, I thought maybe the crowd was gonna eat her alive.”

“How was the band?”

“Hot. And they liked working with her. The lead man came over when we were leaving and said he'd sign her in a heartbeat. But she said she only did numbers where the cross shone through.”

“Kelly told him that?” Peter liked it. A lot. “Probably why she didn't include it in her sheet. Hollywood thinks the Christian music industry is something for choirs and robes and backcountry churches.”

“You said there were two things bothering you?”

“Hold on to that thought a minute longer, I want to work this through in my head.”

JayJay subsided and studied his surroundings. To his relief, the town that rose up around them was not the town he remembered. Not entirely different, but not the same either. JayJay took comfort in not being confronted with more mysteries he needed to work around. The road grew into a real gasoline alley, with car dealerships to either side. Peter turned into the Ford lot and walked beneath the strings of plastic flags flapping in the hot wind.

“Well, by golly, I guess the rumors got it right for once.” The man wore an electric-blue jacket and a Ford Racing tie and a grin big as a shout. “Pardner, you just got to let me shake your hand.”

“John Junior, meet Miller Whitley, mayor of Salton City.”

“Howdy, Mr. Whitley.”

“Call me Miller. Only people using my last name around here are bankers and folks from Sacramento, and I'd just as soon skewer that lot and have me a Texas barbecue.”

His energy disguised the fact that he wasn't a large man. His smile was the grandest part of him, creasing everything from his neck to his forehead. He bounced on his toes while shaking JayJay's hand, as though the delight he felt required every inch of his frame. “I tell you what. When they said that old crook they called a star was gone wherever it is they bury the live ones down in Hollywood, why, I wished I was a Catholic, just so I could go light myself a mess of them candles. But I got hold of that desire 'fore it ever saw daylight, on account of my daddy raised his boy to die deep in the Baptist fold.”

Peter explained, “Our man Neil actually got banned from inside the city limits.”

“We're close enough to cowboy country to put up with a lot,” Miller said. “But when that feller borrowed himself a semi with the driver still asleep in the back and drove it through the front doors of the courthouse 'cause the judge told him he had to pay a speeding ticket, well, we figured it was time to draw a line in the sand.”

“Tell him about the ticket,” Peter said.

“Weren't all that much. 'Cept it was the ninth time he'd been stopped last season.”

“Tenth,” Peter corrected.

“Actually, it was the twelfth, since they stopped him three times before they finally got the keys away from him. At gunpoint. But who's counting.” He stopped. “Where was I headed with this thing?”

“The ticket Neil had to pay.”

“There you go. Our big star had bought hisself one of those fancy Eye-talian cars, the ones that come with a bumper sticker that says, ‘You won't be able to read this for long.' So round about midnight on the night in question, our star pulls up to a traffic light and beeps his horn to the patrol car in the next lane. He rolls down his window and says, what was it now?”

Peter supplied, “‘I've been all over town looking for somebody to race. I guess you jokers will have to do.' ”

The mayor laughed and slapped his thigh. “One thing is for sure and for certain. You'd never be talking about that feller starting no prayer group in the hotel.”

“Burn it down, more likely,” Peter agreed.

“Yeah, I don't reckon they miss the pleasure of pulling mattresses and televisions and Coke machines out of the swimming pool every morning.”

JayJay asked, “Folks are talking about our prayer group?”

The mayor waved it away. “That was last week. Then one of our local good-time boys heard his ex-lady friend was flirting with the feller who runs the Tastee Freeze. Two nights back he lashed the shack with cable and used his wrecker to pull it into the passing lane of I-5. Since then, your prayer meeting is just another curiosity in a hot, dusty summer.”

Peter explained, “Miller is deacon in the church Derek and I attend when we're up here.”

“Yeah, Hollywood folks who treated my church like it wasn't something that belonged in a zoo deserved a howdy.” He pointed them toward the office. “Let's mosey into my office 'fore we melt down to sweaty puddles.”

Once inside, however, their progress was halted by what was parked in the far corner of the showroom floor. Standing alongside the door leading back to the repair depot was a carefully restored old pickup. The truck came from the era of rounded fenders and running boards and circular headlights. The hood looked overlong to Peter's eye, and had a hole carved in the middle for a serious set of chromed air vents. Peter had never much cared for trucks. But he watched Miller and all the other sales staff grow grins as JayJay ran his hand along the truck fender.

Miller said to his staff, “Folks, what we have here is about as close to true love as I've seen in quite a while.”

The truck was painted a fingernail-polish red so deep Peter could almost dive in. JayJay said, “I've been looking for this little lady all my life. But I didn't know it until now.”

Miller called to the guy behind the desk, “Toss me the keys, Piston.”

Peter asked, “You've got a salesman named Piston?”

“Yeah, we always figured his momma for a psychic.” He accepted the keys. “Your name really JayJay, like Peter here says?”

JayJay was peering through the open window. “That's right.”

“Well, you sure fit the part, I'll give you that much.” Miller reached through the window and fitted the keys into the ignition. “Fire this lady up and let her sing for you.”

JayJay did not need to be asked twice. He opened the door, stroked the white old-fashioned steering wheel, and hit it.

The entire showroom trembled. The vibrations struck Peter both in the chest and through his feet. The engine sounded like something from Daytona, a fluid roar of metal and force.

JayJay's eyes had gone completely round. He looked through the open window at where Miller was grinning at him, and floored the pedal.

They might as well have been standing at the base of a space shuttle with the engines on full.

JayJay gave a cowboy's whoop, so loud it was heard over the engine's bellow. Yee-
hah
.

He revved it once more, then cut the motor. And said in genuine breathless wonder, “Y'all give me a minute here to refit my heart inside my chest.”

Miller climbed up on the running board. “Nineteen forty-seven Ford half-ton body. We reworked the frame so it could handle a Shelby Cobra three fifty-seven.”

“We?”

“My boy and me. The hood's fiberglass, eleven and a half inches longer than the original. Mag shifter. Getrag transmission. MacPherson gas-pack strut suspension, just like them wild boys use over at Indianapolis. Pirelli racers, fourteen inches wide and ribbed for wet traction. Nineteen layers of hand-polished lacquer.”

JayJay stroked the wheel. “How'd your boy let this get out of his hands?”

“Aw, he's moved up to the Bay area. Works in IT. Got hisself a lady friend straight outta Marin County. Which, if'n you don't know, is where they raise Martians in human skin. The lady's into Japanese designer fashion and black fingernail polish. Edna, that's my wife, she and I've been taking lessons so's we can carry a conversation with her through dinner. Learned all about tofu and track lighting.”

JayJay could not hide his disbelief. “He gave this up for a lady?”

“What can I say. He's twenty-nine and doing his dead-level best to forget he was ever happy in the San Joaquin Valley.” Miller stroked the door. “Guess I finally got tired of missing the boy and the days we had every time I went inside our garage.”

JayJay tasted the words a couple of times before asking softly, “How much?”

Miller gave a sad laugh. “I could say a million dollars and you wouldn't blink. Tell me I'm wrong.”

JayJay was still playing with the steering wheel. “I never figured I had much use for all the money they were shoving at me until now. That's not the best way to start dickering, though, is it.”

Peter objected, “I don't get it. You guys are talking about an old
truck
.”

JayJay gave him a stricken look. Miller said, “Don't mind him, son. He's Hollywood. Them folks just plain don't know any better.”

It took Peter a minute to realize JayJay was now talking to the truck. “You got to excuse the feller. He didn't mean it.”

Miller opened the truck door. “Let's go inside my office and talk about this other thing. See where it takes us.”

The office had a glass wall overlooking the showroom. Even when JayJay was looking straight at Peter, his attention remained on the pickup. Miller said, “I got to tell you, when Peter told me his idea, I thought it sounded partly loco and partly like an answer to prayer.”

Peter asked, “And now?”

“Depends on the day. Before y'all got here I was leaning more toward crazy. But now that I got old JayJay here sitting in my office and in love with my metal memories, well, I'm thinking this thing might just grow wings and fly.”

Peter looked at JayJay. “I need to make sure you're actually listening.”

JayJay was still blinking like he'd been poleaxed. “I'm here, ain't I?”

“Remember what Britt told you,” Peter said. “This is
vital.
”

JayJay focused then. Peter saw it happen. The cowboy stood and turned his chair so his back was to the showroom. Seated himself again. “Okay. You got me.”

“You remember when I was telling Britt about heightening the film's drama?”

“Something about playing up the moral side.”

“Right. Balancing the action, hooking into a dilemma that is resolved by the same climax.” He saw JayJay's forehead crinkle in confusion, but forged on. “What I want to do is use the town and its problems as a true-to-life modern drama. Make the folks here our walk-ons. Use the crisis they're facing. Turn it into the story you're confronting.”