WLT

by Garrison Keillor

  “Raymond’s death was awful for his girlfriend Pearl Pierce because she was waiting for him at the Clover Motel that night. He had dropped her there with her little pink ted-dybear negligee and he had gone to Grafton for a couple quarts of beer. Ordinarily Raymond was a cautious driver, like most good Lutherans, but here he was on his way back to the motel to find pure joy and his hormones stepped down on the gas and his member took hold of the wheel and he was a goner. Being Lutheran, he needed that beer to dull the pleasure of love, so you could say it was guilt that killed him, and poor Pearl lay there in her negligee, hair combed, teeth brushed, and her breasts lightly scented, lay for a couple hours, and by then was furious at being stood up and she called Raymond’s house and said, ‘I want to talk to that lying no-good rat’s-ass son of yours,’ and Raymond’s mother had to give her the tragic news. Pearl was so broken up over this that she lost heart and married a minister—she is my wife—and our first child was named Raymond. We parted company five years ago, when I left the church. A sad story, son. A good woman.

  “Meanwhile the Shepherds went for the championship. They found a gospel vocal coach, who gave them some good tips, such as: eliminate nervous habits like picking at sores or warts, always look happy when you sing, and if you hit a sour note, don’t wince or turn red—close your eyes and hold out your hands, maybe they’ll think you went sharp from the emotion. The coach—who was Baptist, by the way—also took Al aside and told him that if he wanted to be a real bass singer, he’d have to smoke Luckies and drink Jim Beam before every performance to tone up his voice. Al did as told and the others decided as a matter of loyalty to join him.

  “Now, here I’m coming toward the answer to your question, son. The Shepherds knew it was wrong—to get drunk so you can sing gospel music better! It’s terrible, of course it is—but some things that you know are wrong, you still do because you’re curious to know how it’ll turn out. And it turned out great. On a pack of Luckies and a pint of hooch, Al could sing down under the floorboards. And you know that the key to a good gospel quartet is the bass. So they sounded better. And the guilt for having done something wrong is not so terrible if it turns out well. And then, too, they were from Stacy. So that’s why the Shepherds drink so much even though they sing gospel music.”

  “And then?” asked Frank.

  “And then what?”

  “What happened to them then?”

  Reverend Odom’s mind had drifted away for a moment.

  “I always get thirsty when I think about North Dakota,” he said softly. He looked out the window at Franklin Avenue drifting by.

  “Do you want to stop for a beer?”

  The man’s face clouded. “No, I would like an Everclear. And then three beers. But I’m not going to do it.” He smiled. “Praise God for the victory. I’m not going to do it.” He glanced up at Frank. “So—what happened was that the Shepherds won first prize in the regional sing-off in Minnesota, beating out several quartets much better than them. I remember there was one from Park River, N.D., who came with a cheering section that waved pompons and screamed:Father Son and Holy Ghost,

  North Dakota is the most.

  Minnesota can’t come near it.

  Father Son and Holy Spirit.”

  “Excuse me,” said Frank, “but why were you there?”

  “By then, I was their accompanist and their driver. So we headed to Minneapolis for the Golden Gospel finals, and Wendell fell asleep in the front seat and saw Raymond in a dream. Raymond was driving a white convertible and he looked blissful. He said, ‘This is heaven. I really like it up here. It’s neat. But you can’t come unless I say so. Maybe I’ll let you. I don’t know. I gotta think about it. By the way, what were you doing dinking around with my sister, you jerk?’ Wendell woke up and threw his arms around me and we almost went in the ditch.

  “It scared the Shepherds silly. To this day they’re terrified to death to be in a car. Like Wendell said, God loves symmetry and sometimes you can see too clearly what comes next. He was scared that if they won the tournament, then on the long drive home God would run their car into a tree and kill them. It bothered him so much he got the dry heaves backstage and then Rudy told him to straighten out. Rudy said, ‘It’s only if we lose that we have to drive home. If we win, we stay in Minneapolis and go on the radio, and down here you can walk or take the streetcar.’ So they went out and sang their butts off.

  “Their big opposition was a quartet called Prisoners of Christ from the State Reform School, with a bass so low he made your shoes shake and a high tenor who made your hair stand on end, and a cowgirls’ quartet who sang ‘Climb Climb Up Sunshine Mountain’ with all the hand motions and who wore extremely short skirts so that when they reached high, high up for the tippy-top of Sunshine Mountain, the judges could see their pink undies. The pink looked so much like flesh tone, you had to look hard to see they weren’t naked underneath. But the Shepherds beat them dead with their song, ‘Crash on the Highway.’ It was about Raymond. You can find a copy of it in the record library. But anyway they won. They attended Bathsheba for a year and fooled around with Christian girls—at least they were Christians when they met the Shepherds—and they settled down in Minneapolis, within walking distance of WLT, and they’ve been singing on the radio for ten years, and always expecting God would punish them, but He hasn’t yet. So why should I?”

  The bus pulled up in the alley behind the Antwerp. Frank thanked him for the story, and they took the elevator up to the twelfth floor and found Wendell’s back door. A big dog was snarling on the other side. “Open it quick and I’ll grab him,” said the minister, and Frank yanked the door open and the dog leaped and Reverend Odom had him by the collar and twisted it and hauled the dog into the bathroom and locked him in. The apartment stank of garbage and cigarette smoke. Frank found the closet and a suitcase and packed some suits and then he heard the scratch of an old Victrola.

  “Here it is,” called the minister. “ ‘Crash on the Highway.’” Frank listened, and so did the dog. He stopped scratching on the bathroom wall. The record hissed and crackled like a bonfire and then an organ slithered in, slow and quivering like gelatin, and Wendell’s high mournful voice.

  It was one a.m. when five of us

  Were heading toward the hop,

  Driving cross the barren plains

  So fast we could not stop.

  Raymond was a Christian boy

  And he avoided sin.

  He did not want to be with us,

  He would not taste the gin;

  He would not smoke a cigarette,

  Or neck like you and me.

  Then we swerved and missed the curve

  And crashed into a tree.

  WENDELL: I don’t know how it happened. I was on the floor of the backseat and the next thing I knew there were flames and broken glass and the smell of burnt rubber and I cried, “Where is everybody?”

  ELMER: We were all there without a scratch on our bodies, standing in the road, not even our hair burned, and I was still holding a Dixie cup full of gin and not a drop of it spilled.

  AL: Not a button was missing on my clothing, nothing was ripped or torn, I noticed as I hurriedly dressed, and then I thought, where’s Raymond?

  RUDY: The tree we crashed into was on fire, its branches blazing bright white against the starry western sky, and there on a branch hung the poor broken bleeding body of Raymond.

  WENDELL: We lifted him down and laid him on the ground and he was in pain but he looked up at us and smiled and tried to speak.

  ELMER: We put our ears down close and we heard his last words. He said, “I want you guys to go on and sing. You’re good. I never told you that before but you are. Music is hard work, you’ve got to practice and practice until you can’t practice anymore and then you have to keep practicing, but you can do it, you can go all the way, and when you reach almost to the top and you need a little bit extra to put you over, then I want you to think of me, Raymond.” And then he fell back
in death.

  Teen Christian,

  Teen Christian

  Living in the sky.

  You didn’t do nothing wrong,

  How come you had to die?

  Teen Christian,

  Teen Christian,

  We look up to you.

  We hope you’re happy up above,

  We send you all our love,

  Cause now we’re Teen Christians too.

  Frank put the last slithery show suit in the suitcase, grabbed up a fistful of underwear and one of socks, and stuffed them in. Reverend Odom opened the bathroom door as they both headed out, and the dog hit the back door full-tilt just as they slammed it behind them.

  CHAPTER 35

  The Long Night

  Slim was standing out in front of the Five Corners. He did not appear to be sober, but he recognized them and boarded the bus without assistance. “I need some smokes,” he said. “Anybody got a quarter?” They got smokes and drove on to the church. Elmer was ready and Rudy, but Wendell was camped in the vestibule signing autographs and cracking jokes and having his picture taken and Frank had to pry him loose from a gaggle of girls, who clung to his seaweed arms, and maneuver the star through the ranks of the faithful and up the bus steps where he turned and flung his arms open wide and yelled, “I love ya! Every one of ya! Love ya!” He ducked into the bus and pulled off his tie and said, “Holy shit, gimme a beer.” Then he peered out the window. “Didja guys see that little brunette number with the blouse? Her nipples were poking out so you coulda hung your coffee cup on’em.” Rudy hooted. “You sure bring out the best in ’em, Brother! You had ’em creaming in their jeans! Not a dry seat in the house tonight!” The bus pulled away from the church at 11:07, by Frank’s watch. “Hang on to your socks!” said Red. Elmer was lying in his bunk in back, smoking a cigar. Al was asleep already, butt out in a top bunk, snoring lightly. “I need a woman so bad I can taste her,” said Wendell.

  “In six hours,” said Reverend Odom, “we’ll be in Roseau, on the radio. Roseau is seven hours from here, I believe. God help us.”

  The bus was an old Hawkeye Custom Coach, with inboard toilet and kitchen, that slept eight, supposedly, and there were nine of them, the four Shepherds plus Slim, Reverend Odom, and Red Pfister the driver-drummer, and Barney Barnum the engineer, who also cooked, and Frank who would announce and sell the songbooks and 45s and pass the hat at their church gigs. The bus had belonged to The Rankins, another gospel family and the Shepherd Boys’ hated rivals, who were now touring in a larger bus down South, where people loved them and where it was warm. “I hope snakes bite ’em,” said Rudy. “I hope they catch hemorrhoids from each other, great big grapes the size o’ lemons, hemmies so big they can’t sit down, and then I hope God sends each one of ’em the biggest, hardest stool of their lives. That’s what I wish for The Rankins.”

  This bus had seemed luxurious to Elmer when it was full of smiling Rankins in their white cowboy suits with the green and gold fringe. He bought it from them hoping some of their luck would come with it, and found out that the clutch was shot. Al nicknamed it Rankins’ Revenge, but of course The Rankins were sitting pretty and had nothing to avenge. They were hot, burning up the charts, with a big cheesy photo of them on the cover of Radio Romance this month and a story, “The Christmas I Can’t Forget,” by that turd Ronnie Rankin describing the Christmas he spent visiting orphanages and handing out gifts to crippled kids—what a liar! No, it was the Shepherds who were dragging ass.

  A 6 a.m. broadcast and a noon show just to pay overhead, and an evening concert to earn the salaries, and their profits (if any) had to come from songbook and record sales—WLT was paying them squat for the tour, and as for the sponsors, Home Salad and Prestige Tire & Muffler, their total contribution was thirty quarts of cole slaw and six tubeless tires for the tour, and the slaw was sour and the tires were the wrong size. The people at Home felt that the gospel audience probably was the sort that made its own salads. They told Elmer that they would not renew their sponsorship past January unless things picked up. Meanwhile, Rudy had heard a rumor that The Rankins were about to buy a plane.

  “I pray to God they crash in flames and land right square on their hinders,” he said.

  But the bus was too small for nine, a fact that dawned on them as they sped through St. Cloud and started feeling sleepy. The four bunks were the Shepherds’, of course, and Slim and the Reverend Odom, who were shorter, were supposed to share the table, which folded down to make a bed, and Frank and Barney would take turns sleeping in the hammock over the driver’s seat, whichever one was not talking to Red and keeping him awake, but the motion of the hammock made a person sick to his stomach, and the table-bed was only four feet wide. A tight left-hand curve would dump the outside man (Slim, who had weak kidneys) into the aisle. He tried to rig up straps to keep himself in, but was afraid he might fall in his sleep and be strangled by them. So nobody slept at first except Al and Rudy and Wendell. And Reverend Odom, slumped in the seat behind the driver. Red was barrelling north at 90 m.p.h. and the Reverend’s bald head rolled from side to side like a loose bowling ball. Barney sat at the table, staring out the window at the farms zooming by as they rocketed north on Highway 10, and Frank sat beside him, writing a letter to Maria, and Slim sat across the aisle, slumped down, playing his guitar and singing:There was an old bugger named Rudy

  Who cared not for youth or for beauty

  But for ignorant sluts

  With thunderous butts

  Whom he jumped as a matter of duty.

  Ay-yi-yi-yi.

  In China they never eat chili.

  So let’s have another one just like the other one,

  And waltz me around again, Willie.

  He was just beginning, “There was an old fairy named Elmer,” when Elmer emerged from the back, sat down beside him, and sighed. “This is a hell of a way to start off a tour on such a low note,” he said. Elmer had a slight lisp that got more pronounced when he was upset, and Frank could tell that he was a long way from being upset. Elmer was the oldest Shepherd and he had put up with so much from his brothers, he didn’t upset easily.

  “Slim,” he said, “I wish you’d try to be a little more positive about the music business.”

  “Elmer,” said Slim, “you’re even crazier than I am and that’s saying something.”

  “This band is right on the verge of a big, big success, Slim. You saw those folks tonight. They were crazy about us. We entertained those folks tonight. They loved us to death. We weren’t like all those poosy-woosy gospel groups who stand around and hum with their hands folded and their eyes rolled up toward the ceiling—man, we did a show tonight. No, we’re on the verge of success, Slim, and you oughta stick with us, but you get so negative sometimes, it’s hard to put up with.”

  “Elmer,” said Slim, “this tour is going to hell and it hasn’t even started. I saw the itinerary. This show was put together by people who hate you, Elmer. Four and five shows a day, miles apart, in the dead of winter. It’s a killer. They’re trying to shove us off the end of the earth. This isn’t for promotion—you’re nuts if you think so. This is winter! It makes no sense. You don’t want us down in the dumps? Fine. I’ll grin till my teeth get a tan, but that doesn’t change facts. We’re going up north, the roads are glare ice, and Red is a drummer, not a driver, and one of these nights we skid off the road and into a tree, and we’ll have to be buried in closed coffins. Those of us up in the front anyway. You princes back there in your warm beds, I suppose you’ll wind up fine.”

  Hearing the remark about his driving, Red accelerated. Frank glanced at the speedometer. Ninety-five. “I figure that seventy should be good enough to get us there,” he said, looking over Red’s shoulder at the centerline stripes that whooshed underneath them, like solid white rail. Red liked to stay in the middle of the road and take the curves low. He sailed down into the left lane on a left-hand curve and let the force of the curve bring him back up. “You never know when you may
lose time later,” he said. “Might run into snow north of here. Gotta make time while the road is good.”

  There was an old lecher named Wendell

  Whose cock was indeed monumental

  But so worn from abuse,

  He could only induce

  Orgasm by inserting a candle.

  Ay-yi-yi-yi.

  “Candle doesn’t rhyme with Wendell,” Elmer pointed out. “I’m going to bed.” He trundled back to his bunk and settled in as the bus went into a sharp curve. He added, “Better get your rest, boys. Big day tomorrow.” A long honk went sailing past them on the left, and Red swore under his breath, damn farmers. He held to the middle of the road. Frank leaned around to look out the windshield and to check the speedometer. Back down to ninety, but the road was curvier and there were more dips and potholes. “Looks like the road’s getting bad,” he observed. “She’ll get worse later on,” said Red. And Slim sang another verse:There was an old fellow named Al

  Who wouldn’t take any old gal.

  He preferred one with boobs

  And Fallopian tubes

  And perhaps a vaginal canal.

  Ay-yi-yi-yi.

  He paused, hoping for a word from Al, but Al was out cold, and when Al was asleep, nothing could wake him up before he was ready to rise. The other Shepherds had carried him in and out of buses and hotels, they had parked him in taverns, they had leaned him against the walls and draped him over tables, and once they had floated him in a reflecting pool, to see if a sleeping man will float, and he never woke up once. You could use Al for a shelf, he slept so well. Once, on a Barn Dance tour years ago, Slim put the sleeping Al’s hand in a bowl of warm water to see if he’d wet the bed. It took three bowls, but it worked, and Al still didn’t wake up.