Ed Gorman - The Day The Music Died

Then he went facedown in the snow and Mary screamed and sank down beside him and started rolling him over so she could see his face. When she got him on his back, he started crying and it was so miserable, that sound-^th tears went all the way back to his childhood-and I felt like shit for so many reasons all I could do was walk away, around the side of the house to my car and drive away and head out for Darin Greene’s place.

In the snow and moonlight, the trailer court looked snug and cozy. Window lights seemed inviting and the silver flash of Tv screens promised fun and excitement. Friday nights like this, 77 Sunset Strip was on, one of those entertainingly improbable private-eye shows where the hero drives a new T-bird and even nuns throw themselves at him.

Passing the trailers leading to Darin Greene’s, I heard babies cry, Fats Domino sing, a couple argue and a car being jump-started.

When I pulled up to Greene’s trailer, I saw Lurlene Greene stashing two small children into Darin’s battered Olds convertible. I started to pull into a parking spot but Darin slammed out of the trailer and waved me away.

“You don’t have no business here, man,” he said. “Now get your ass out of here.”

“Your wife asked me to come out.”

“I make the rules around here.”

I glanced over at Lurlene. She was just opening the driver’s door of the Olds. Our eyes met briefly but then she looked away and climbed inside. The Olds took a couple tries to start then was rumbling like a prairie train in the middle of the night. Darin slapped the trunk of the car the way a man would slap a horse’s rump. Lurlene gave the big car some gas, backed out of her parking spot and drove off down the narrow lane between the trailers.

Darin watched her go. He wore a T-shirt and dark pants and no shoes. He smelled sourly of sweat and whiskey.

I said, “Lurlene said you wanted to talk to me.”

“Lurlene wanted me to talk to you and that’s a whole ‘nother thing, man.”

“Why did you and Kenny Whitney have a falling out about a year ago?”

“Who says we had a falling out?”

“You did, for one.” He obviously didn’t remember much of our earlier conversation. “And about a hundred people who saw you get into a fight down at Paddy’s Tap one night. You pulled a knife on him. And then you had another fight about a week later and broke out a window over at Russert’s bar throwing a beer glass at him.”

“We was just drunk is all.” Then he waved me off. “I had enough of this bullshit, man. I ain’t got no shoes on. I’m goin’ in.

An’ you get the hell out of here and leave my wife alone. You hear? You leave her alone, McCain.”

I hit him with the only weapon I had. And, who knew, maybe it wasn’t a weapon at all. Maybe my guess was totally wrong. “You ever find that gun of yours?”

He tensed up. No doubt about it. “What gun, man?”

“Your thirty-two.”

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

“Yesterday. When they were throwing you out of Paddy’s. I drove your car, remember?”

“Yeah? So?”

“You said you couldn’t find your gun.”

“Not me, man. I never had no gun to lose.” He’d forgotten that, too.

“I think I know where it is.”

He looked startled. “What you talkin’ about?”

“Cliffie Sykes has got it. It’s the gun he found at Kenny Whitney’s. It’s the gun that was used to kill Susan.”

He started walking. I don’t know where he was going, but he seemed frantic to get there. He must have walked, barefooted in the icy night, four, five hundred feet down that narrow asphalt strip of road. And then he stopped and walked back, the Platters loud about two trailers down.

“I didn’t kill her, man. I swear I didn’t. A colored man like me, Sykes’d hang my ass for sure if he ever found out that was my gun.”

Actually, Sykes probably wouldn’t hang his ass. He was having too good a time sullying the familial pride of the Whitneys, but I didn’t want Greene to know that.

“How’d the gun get out at Whitney’s?”

He looked sullen and then he looked sad.

“I gave it to Susan. About a year ago or so.”

“Why?”

Another sullen look. “This ain’t any of your business.”

“Why’d you give her the gun, Darin?”

After a time, he said, “Because she was afraid.”

“Of whom?”

“My feet’re freezin’, man.”

He started doing a little dance step to impress me with how cold his feet were.

“You can sit in the car.”

“Up yours.”

“Who was she afraid of?”

He was silent for a time. “Kenny.”

“What happened between you and Kenny?”

An old Plymouth pickup truck came down the narrow lane. The man inside waved at Darin and Darin waved back. Inside, his phone started ringing.

“I better get that,” he said.

And then he was gone and I knew he’d answered all the questions he was going to. I listened to him slam the door and then bolt it from the inside. He must have had three different kinds of bolts.

I backed out of the parking space. I thought maybe I could find Lurlene, but then I decided she had too much of a head start. Besides, I was worrying about Ruthie again. I hadn’t liked the way we’d left it, that a couple of her friends would help her take care of things. That was the trouble with the abortion laws, a subject I’d argued about in law school. The alternative to legal abortion was illegal abortion and that meant a lot of innocent girls dying every year because well-intentioned friends had decided to help them out.

When you came into town from the northeast, as I did, it looked a lot bigger, a monument to Mammon out here on the prairies. We even had a Howard Johnson’s motel and restaurant and that was the new place for the more social teenagers to hang out. Not the motel-there was only one motel in town that’d let teenagers shack up, a trucking place out on the highway -the restaurant. It was kind of funny seeing all these hot rods in the Howard Johnson parking lot, chopped and channeled louvered Merc’s and street-rods and Bob Mallory’s beautiful ‘ci Ford Phaeton, all those Turbo heads and Johannsen ignitions and extra pots to soup everything up.

I drove up to the edge of the parking lot where there was a pay phone. I called my folks and tried to sound chatty. Then I said, calmly as I could, “I told Ruthie I’d help her on this history test she’s got next week.”

“Oh?” Mom said. “That’s strange. I didn’t know you helped her with her tests.”

I laughed. “You mean, she’s the smart one so why would she want help from me?”

“Well-” Mom said. And laughed, too.

“Is she around, Mom?”

“No. She called and said she was staying at Gloria Spellman’s tonight. Said they’d both be up studying all night.”

It wasn’t true. I wondered where Ruthie really was tonight. I got scared. “Well, tell her I’ll call her in the morning.”

“I’ll tell her, honey.”

“And say hi to Dad.”

“I will. Love you, honey.”

“Love you, too, Mom.”

I drove downtown. The girl-cruise was in full flower. Cars of every description moved slowly along Central Avenue where the theaters and pizza shops and hamburger joints were located-where the girls were located. Up and down, down and up, the cars drove, most of the boys resorting to grins and gawks and graceless waves. That was how the uncool boys handled it, the ones in Dad’s car or driving the 1948 Kaiser or the

Henry or an old dog of a Dodge that was rusting into death even while you watched. The kids fit their cars. In my day, I’d maneuvered a

Studebaker with bad steering problems up and down Central Avenue. I had science fiction magazines and Gold Medal paperbacks stacked in the backseat and the only radio station I could get played Lawrence Welk every third song.