by Rick Boling
We were in the mixdown booth at the time, and Jimmy was counting off the intro to a rhythm-section track when Ellie loudly exclaimed, “Royape.” Everyone froze, and after a couple of seconds she put her hands on her hips and glared at us. “Royape!” she repeated. Finally, Doris leaned over and pointed at the master control. “Do as she says, idiot,” she whispered to Jimmy. “Roll Tape.”
That was amazing, but it didn’t hold a candle to her second word, which came a few days later while her mother and I were lying in bed next to her crib. The radio was on, and suddenly Ellie stood up and wailed, “Cayzeee.” She didn’t say it so much as sing it, in a quavering voice that faded away as Patsy Cline finished the line with “I’m crazy for feelin’ so lonely.”
“Far out,” I said. Ellie smiled as if she knew we were impressed, and throughout the rest of the song, she repeated her trembling rendition of the word every time Patsy sang it. She was mostly off-key and late in her delivery, but she didn’t miss a one. When the song was over she plopped down on her butt and beamed that electric smile at us.
“Looks like we’ve got another singer in the family,” Doris said. “I love Patsy Cline.”
“So do I,” I said. “It’s too bad she’s …” I stopped myself, but Doris was too sharp not to pick up on what I’d started to say.
“Too bad she’s what?”
“Oh, nothing,” I said. “Hey, Ellie has to have heard that song before, don’t you think?”
“Rickeee,” she growled, reverting back to my childhood name as she always did when she was angry. “Finish your sentence.”
I knew I was letting myself in for another fight, but I couldn’t think of any way to get out of it. “Patsy’s going to die in a plane crash,” I said.
“No!” she cried. “When? How?”
Unfortunately, that was one date I would always remember. In my first life, I’d had occasion to visit the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, and at the Patsy Cline exhibit I’d read the story of the crash and seen the watch she was wearing when the plane went down. But it wasn’t the watch that caught my interest, it was the date: March 5th, 1963, the day my father had passed away. Patsy’s watch was frozen at 6:20 p.m.—presumably the moment the crash occurred—so I not only knew the date, but the approximate time she died.
“We have to do something,” Doris said after I told her the story. “Maybe you couldn’t do anything about Marilyn, but you’ve gained a lot of recognition and respect in the music industry since then, so I know you can find a way to warn Patsy. Besides, she’s obviously your daughter’s favorite singer, so if not for me and her fans, we should at least try to save her for Ellie’s sake.”
Saying Patsy was Ellie’s favorite singer was a stretch, but arguing the point wasn’t going to get me anywhere; this time I knew I was on the losing end of the battle. The next day, Doris managed to get in touch with Patsy’s agent, who had apparently heard of Blue Note Records because he seemed exceptionally cooperative. He even offered to send us a lengthy telegram with a list of her upcoming concert bookings. Doris knew, however, that we only needed her schedule for the next few days, because it was already March 2nd. The agent told her that the only gig Patsy had scheduled over the next two weeks was a benefit to be held the next day at the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall in Kansas City, Kansas. This meant that her plane trip must have been delayed, because the crash hadn’t occurred until the fifth.
I tried to tell Doris it was crazy to think we could do anything in that short a time, but she was already on the phone with our travel agent, booking a convoluted schedule of flights that started in Tampa, then had us changing over in Atlanta and Nashville on our way to St. Louis, where we would take a chartered prop plane to the Fairfax Municipal Airport in Kansas City. The difficulties we encountered in booking the flights and the ensuing delays seemed to confirm my feeling that there was some kind of resistance in the space-time continuum to our making major alterations in the preordained flow of history. I mentioned this to Doris on the last leg of our trip, but she just kept telling me I was being paranoid. Her confidence in that diagnosis held until the pilot told us we would have to divert to a small airport in Springfield, Missouri because Fairfax Municipal was socked in with fog.
We landed in Springfield at 8:00 a.m. on March 5th, with no chance of flying to Kansas City. So we spent the next two hours trying to rent a car. Doris, who seemed almost psychic when it came to anticipating problems, had brought along a bundle of cash, and after paying an exorbitant fee to a private rental agency, we hit the road at 10:30 in a brand-new Chevy Impala and headed north. The thick fog slowed us as we approached Kansas City, and it was nearing noon by the time we reached the city limits.
The agent had told Doris Patsy would be staying at the Town House Motor Hotel, and we stopped at the first gas station we saw to ask for directions. The attendant—a young redneck we could barely understand—had no idea where the hotel was, so we had to look it up in the phone book and call from a pay phone for directions. After losing our way twice, we pulled up to the hotel office at 12:45, only to find that Patsy had left fifteen minutes earlier. By then the fog had lifted, and as we drove up to the small airport we saw Patsy and three other people—one wearing a pilot’s cap—walk out on the tarmac toward a Piper Comanche prop plane. Ignoring the shouts from employees, we sprinted through the terminal and out the open gate, catching up with them as they were about to board.
Before I could stop her, Doris ran in front of the pilot waving her arms like a wild woman. I was still reluctant to interfere, but since we’d come this far, I decided the least I could do was try to help out. I joined her just as the pilot was trying to push her aside, and even though I’d never been much of a fighter, when I saw him roughly grab Doris’s arm, something snapped.
“Take your hands off my wife,” I shouted, catching him by the shoulder and pulling him away. He turned and took a swing at me, but his awkward roundhouse went wide, and when I dodged, his momentum carried him to the asphalt. He started to get up, but by then Doris had taken over, placing her foot strategically between his legs. She pressed the heel of her shoe against his crotch and said in a calm, menacing voice, “If you’re planning on having children, I would advise you not to move.”
Meanwhile, the others had started backing away, all except Patsy, who remained stoically in place. I realized the full gravity of the situation when I looked over her shoulder and saw two uniformed policemen emerge from the terminal and head in our direction. I was about to grab Doris and make a run for it, when I heard that little voice in my head. You can handle this, Rix, it said. Just calm down and play it by ear. So I took a deep breath and gave Patsy my most sincere smile.
“I apologize for the intrusion, Miss Cline,” I said. “And I can assure you we are not the reincarnation of Bonnie and Clyde. As you can see, we have no weapons, and the only violence you have observed was due to your pilot’s aggressive behavior. We mean you no harm whatsoever. In fact, we are here to save your life.”
The policemen arrived seconds later, but before they could draw their weapons, Patsy held up a hand to stop them. “It’s alright, officers. Give us a minute, please.” Then, turning to me she said, “Who the hell are you?”
“My name is Richard Voniossi,” I said. “I am president of Blue Note Records. You may know us as the producers of Miss Sarah Love?”
For a moment she looked confused, then a light seemed to dawn in her eyes. “I Think I’m Ready,” she said. “Platinum album, three gold singles. Incredible voice. Sure, I know the label. So what the hell is this all about? You trying to sign me away from Decca or something?”
“Not at all,” I said, “Though you should not take that as an insult. Were it conceivable, I’d sign you in a second. All I’m asking for is a few minutes of your time. I promise that if you speak to us in private, I will leave you alone after that and you can go about your business in any way you see fit.”
“Look, Hoss,” she said, “I don’t need yo
ur permission to go about my business any way I see fit. Nobody owns me and nobody tells me what to do, so you can cut that crap. You do seem like a nice feller, though, so what say we retire to the coffee shop and talk about this … whatever it is? A little delay won’t be a problem, will it Randy?” she said to the prone pilot. Then, without waiting for an answer, she turned and headed for the terminal.
I smiled at the two police officers and nodded at Doris, who removed her foot from Randy’s crotch and joined me as we strolled casually behind Patsy.
“What the fuck are we going to do now?” I whispered when we reached the terminal.
“I don’t know,” Doris said, “but whatever it is, we can’t let her get on that plane. And please watch your language.”
So,” Pasty said, after the waitress had delivered our coffee, “what’s this all about Mr. Voniossi?”
“It’s Rich,” I said. “And I know this is going to sound crazy, but you must not get on that plane.”
“Oh?” she said, stirring her coffee then looking at me with a condescending grin. “And why is that?”
“Because it’s going to crash and there will be no survivors.”
“What are you, some sort of fortune teller? Are you planning to charge me a fee for this consultation, or are you only looking for publicity?”
“Neither,” I said. “The reason I know what’s going to happen is …”
“Well?” she said.
Things were happening so fast, I hadn’t had time to come up with a believable story. But I knew I had to say something, so I opened my mouth, hoping some brilliant explanation would come to me before I was forced to close it again. I was about to give up, when the memory of my visit to the Country Music Hall of Fame suddenly flashed in my mind. The details were as clear as one of those episodes Aurélie had put me through, and it gave me an idea. “It’s my daughter,” I said, as the story began to come together in my mind. “She’s your biggest fan, and she also has this, uh, gift. The gift of prophecy, I guess you could say. I mean she has these premonitions. It’s only happened a few times, but she’s always been right.”
“I see,” Patsy said, obviously trying to suppress her cynicism. “So your daughter is the psychic in the family.”
“She is,” I said. “And two days ago, she went into one of her trances and saw the whole thing: the concert, the fog, your refusal to take Dottie West up on her offer to let you ride with her and her husband back to Nashville, the fact that your manager, Randy Hughes, would also be the pilot on this plane trip. Look, what’s going to happen is you’re going to fly out of here and stopover at a small airport in Dyersburg, Tennessee. The airfield manager there is going to advise you to stay the night because of high winds and the possibility of heavy rain, but Randy will refuse. I don’t know if you are aware that Randy is not an instrument-rated pilot, which means he’ll have to navigate visually. And that, of course, is impossible in driving rain. Anyway, ninety miles short of Nashville, he’s going to lose control and the plane will crash, killing everyone on board.”
Doris was staring at me as if my hair had caught on fire, but when I looked at Patsy, I could see she wasn’t dismissing my story out of hand. She picked up her coffee cup, raised it to her lips, then set it down without taking a sip. “That’s an interesting story,” she said. “Even more so because I’ve been having some premonitions myself lately. And frankly, I don’t expect to be around much longer. I even wrote a will recently, and just last week I told Ray Walker … well, never mind what I told him, that’s beside the point. What isn’t beside the point is that I don’t believe you for a minute. Although I may seem like a country bumpkin, I’m not nearly as gullible as most people think. I don’t know what your motivation is, but I’m sure to find out one day, and maybe then we can sit down and talk business. In the meantime, I’ve got a plane to catch.”
She stood and walked toward the door, and before I could move, Doris was on her feet running after her. “Please, Miss Cline,” she said, as the door swung open. “Let us drive you to Nashville. We’ve got a nice car and we won’t charge you a cent.”
Patsy turned and looked over Doris’s shoulder at me. “Boy,” she said, shaking her head, “you folks are something else. Listen, the bottom line is, I’ve already had two close encounters with death, and the third one is bound to be the charm. I’m not worried about it and neither should you be. When it’s my time to go, it’s my time.” And with that, she turned on her heel and headed for the plane.
“I told you,” I said as we watched the four of them board. “Some things are too inevitable to change, especially when we try to move out of my particular cone of influence. My life has—had—nothing to do with Patsy’s, so changing her destiny is like—I don’t know, like trying to stop a freight train with my bare hands.”
As the plane rose into the gloomy sky, Doris put her head on my shoulder and sobbed.
We didn’t hear about the crash until we were driving home from the Tampa airport in our own blinding rainstorm. The report came on the radio, interspersed with static from the lightning. We heard enough, however: “Patsy Cline … crash … no survivors.”
The next day, we were listening to the radio in Doris’s office, when Willie Nelson’s version of Crazy came on. Ellie was in her playpen, and when she heard Willie’s gruff voice, she looked confused. She seemed to be trying to figure out if she should sing along, and right when she opened her mouth, the phone rang, startling us all. Doris seemed unable to move, so I answered the call.
“It’s Patsy’s agent,” I said, handing her the receiver.
She put the phone to her ear and mumbled a greeting, squeezing her eyes shut to hold back the tears. But after a few seconds, her eyes snapped open and her jaw dropped. “It’s … for you,” she said, handing the receiver back to me.
“Hey there Hoss,” said a scratchy woman’s voice. “Sorry ‘bout the voice. I caught a little cold on the trip home. I just wanted to call and say thanks for the tip.”
“Patsy?” I said, incredulous. “Is that you?”
“None other,” she said. “Hope you’re not too upset over that little talk we had. Anyway, didn’t mean to scare you with the phone call, but I thought you should hear it from me personally.”
“Hear what? How? I mean—”
“I’m not a ghost, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said with a chuckle. “I took the plane alright, but when we got to the airport in Dyersburg and the airfield guy tried to talk us into staying overnight, I figured something weird was going on. I begged Randy—God rest his soul—not to fly in that weather, but he wouldn’t listen. I ended up catching a bus back to Nashville, so here I am, none the less for wear, except for a sore throat and the loss of my good buddy. Listen, once you catch your breath, I’d like to talk about visiting your studio. I’ve got some ideas for a new album, stuff I’ve been scribbling about fate and destiny and losing friends and such. But what I’d really like is to meet that psychic daughter of yours.”
Unfortunately, the fact that we were able to save Patsy led Doris to believe we should continue to intervene in the flow of history whenever we could. And her belief in my ability to recall important events was bolstered later in the year when I assured her the Cuban missile crisis would not result in nuclear Armageddon. What I couldn’t seem to convince her of was that I hadn’t actually remembered the crisis until after it started, and that the only reason I’d known the date of Patsy’s plane crash was because it happened to have occurred on the same day my father died. The discussion eventually ended without a resolution, but the issue did not go away. And when JFK was assassinated in November of ’63, I once again had to suffer through her admonitions for not at least trying to warn him. I tried to explain the potential for disaster in attempting to alter events of such magnitude, but that was an argument I would never be able to win.
The next few years were so busy for us—building the business and raising our daughter—we didn’t have time to worry much about the
outside world. Blue Note Records continued to expand, eventually giving rise to Blue Note Enterprises, while Ellie grew into a beautiful young girl whose intellect far surpassed that of her peers. Then, in 1968, the controversy raised its ugly head again when I was caught off guard by the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. After that, it took a couple of weeks for things to finally settle into an uneasy truce between us, but by then I knew Doris was never going to let loose of the conviction that I should use my prior knowledge to right the wrongs of the world. And her unshakable position on the subject would continue to be one of the few causes of discord in our otherwise nearly idyllic marriage.
Another Prodigy
Daddy?” Ellie said, over breakfast one morning. “What’s a con … glom … erate?” She was reading the newspaper, something that always fascinated me because I’d never cared much about the news when I was her age, especially the financial pages. Ellie, on the other hand, had been reading the paper since she was four, and now, at age seven, she was far more knowledgeable about the workings of the world than I was.
“It’s a kind of big collection of businesses, all owned by the same corporation,” I said. “You know what a corporation is?”
“Don’t be silly.” She laughed. “Of course I know what a corporation is. Blue Note Enterprises is a corporation, right?”
“Right.”
“So, we’re a conglomerate. I mean, we have lots of businesses and they’re all owned by our corporation.”