Ed Gorman: The Day The Music Died

I didn’t recognize her at first. I know how odd that sounds. She was, after all, my kid sister, Ruthie, all the years we’d lived in the same house over on Clark Street together, how could I not recognize her? I guess because I always think of Ruthie being happy, but she didn’t look happy now. She looked furtive.

She was at the far end of a medicine aisle and it was easy to see what she was doing because she was so bad at it. She was shoplifting. Fortunately for her, there weren’t any store employees around. My instinct was to run down the aisle and stop her, but there wasn’t time. Her hand flicked out snake-qk, grabbed a small box of some kind, and dumped it in her open purse. Then she started looking frantically around for a way out of the store.

She didn’t appear to be in danger of becoming a great criminal mastermind.

She started up the aisle and, when she saw me, she froze in place and started looking frantically around again. I walked up to her and slid my arm through hers and whispered, “Why don’t you put it back, Ruthie?”

Ruthie got the standard-issue McCain looks. There’s a factory somewhere in Indiana, I think, that mass-produces McCains. A family reunion looks like one of those vast General Motors storage lots but instead of hundreds of identical Chevrolets, it’s McCains. The outsize blue eyes, the freckles, the slightly imperious nose and the kid-grin. Even Great-grandfather McCain, God love him, looked like he was twenty when he smiled. Even with his store-boughts.

Ruthie wore a black winter coat, open so I could see her black sweater and tight tweed skirt. She had a cute little pink barrette in her short blond hair. She’d bloomed in the past year or so, our little Ruthie, not only pretty but sexy, if I can say that without getting too Freudian. Mom and Dad said our driveway never wanted for junky cars with teenage boys behind the wheels.

“C’mon, Ruthie,” I whispered again.

“Put it back.”

There was panic and embarrassment and anger in her soft blue eyes. I felt all the same things.

I didn’t want to see my sister get nailed for shoplifting. I also didn’t want to see the family name ruined. When I was in tenth grade, we managed to move out of the Knolls and into town, into a nice little frame house. And Dad got a better job, a tie-wearing kind of job, as warehouse manager over at Fugate

Industrial, which manufactures safety parts for various kinds of electronic companies. It’s not too often Knolls people turn respectable. A shoplifting daughter wouldn’t exactly help my folks’ reputation. And it wouldn’t do a hell of a lot of good for Ruthie, either.

All this was in my head as I tried to grab her arm again without anybody noticing. But as I got to the front of the aisle, Ruthie broke ahead.

She nudged into a large display of hula hoops that had been marked down since the summer. But didn’t slow down at all. She marched straight to the in-out doors and bolted right out to the sunny street.

I was maybe six steps behind her when I felt a large hand on my shoulder and I turned to see Wes Lindstrom, the pharmacist and the man who was engaged to Mary nodding to my hand. “I hope you’re planning to pay for that.”

Of course, I first thought of Ruthie. He’d seen her steal the box and wanted restitution. But then he said, “Wouldn’t look real good for one of the town’s most prominent attorneys to be arrested for shoplifting.” And with that he snatched the Manhunt magazine from my fingers.

“Oh,” I said. “The magazine.”

He smiled icily. “It just looks a little suspicious when you’re walking out the door with it, without paying for it.”

He looked like one of those soap opera actors who play doctors. He was tall with a somewhat craggy face and strawberry-blond hair in a widow’s peak. I suppose women found him handsome but there was something superior and judgmental about him. You could see it in his mouth, the way it was always tightening inffdispleasure and disdain. As it was now.

I dug into my pocket, took out a crumpled dollar bill, and laid it on his palm.

He looked at the magazine cover for the first time. It showed a half-naked woman sprawled on a bloody bed and a dark-suited killer with a gun in his hand crawling out a window.

“Still reading all the intellectual stuff, huh?” His lips became a disapproving editorial on my reading tastes.

“You might like it, if you gave it a try.”

“I doubt it. Not with all the medical journals I need to read.” He nodded to the sales counter. “I’ll get you your change.”

I wondered if he really thought I’d been trying to steal the magazine. I wondered also if he’d tell people he really thought I’d been trying to steal the magazine. We all like to gossip, I suppose, though of course I’d deny I liked to if you asked me, but Wes was a legendary gossip. He could kill you faster than a bullet. All he had to do was whisper the right words.

He gave me my change then put the magazine in a sack. “People might think you were stealing it otherwise.” A quick, icy smile.

“That medicine you gave me for my corns really worked, Wes,” an elderly lady said behind me.

“I need some more of it.”

“You wouldn’t have all those corns, Betsy, if you weren’t out all night doing the mambo and the cha-cha-cha,” he said.

She giggled and you could hear the girl that remained alive inside her despite her seventy years and it was a nice, pure, inspiring sound. I had to give it to Wes. He could be a charmer when he wanted to.

I went back to the counter. “I think your boyfriend thinks I’m a shoplifter.”

Mary was wiping off the counter. I told her what happened. “He’s just sensitive about you is all. You know, about how you and I grew up together and all.”

I wanted to kiss her. Right then and there. I guess it was her sweetness. Her goodness. I needed something to believe in after I’d seen my sister stealing that small box.

I spent the next few minutes listening to the radio that played over the speakers in the store.

Small-town radio alternates between Bing Crosby records and local news and what they call Trader Tom, who conducts a five-minute show every hour to tell the good people what kind of deal you can get on certain second-hand items, and who to call if you’re interested. Right now, he was listing a refrigerator, a sectional couch that made into a bed and a complete collection of Saturday Evening Posts from 1941 through the present. I figured my dad would like them. He loved the western serials, the Ernest Haycox ones especially. Then Trader Tom had his “Farm Folks” segment where he talked about the kind of things farmers had up for sale or trade.

Today a farmer had a calf he wanted to trade for a good hunting rifle. Trader Tom gave the guy’s phone number, of course. Townsfolks always feel superior when they hear the “Farm Folks” segments. We live in the big city, after all.

Mary came over with the coffeepot but I put my hand over my cup. “I’m starting to get the jitters.”

“You hear about the skating party tonight?”

“Uh-uh.”

“They’re going to dedicate it to Buddy Holly and Richie Valens and the Big Bopper and play all the records tonight.”

“That’s nice.”

“I’ll probably go if Wes’ll let me.”

“You have to check with him now?”

She shrugged. “He just thinks it looks funny if I go places without him. You know, like I’m still single or something.”

What the hell are you marrying him for? I wanted to say. You’re so damned decent and smart. And he’s such a sanctimonious prig.

But, of course, I didn’t say anything like that. I just said, “Well, maybe I’ll check it out.”

The phone rang and she excused herself to go get it. I noticed how her expression changed from a neutral hello to something more complicated and less friendly. “Just a minute please.” She held the phone out to me. “It’s Pamela.”