by Stephen King
“Concentrate on football, making grades, and not getting too homesick the first semester,” I said. “Please. Don’t screw around.”
He did a zombie Frankenstein voice. “Yes … master …”
“How’s Bobbi Jill?”
“Better,” he said. “There she is.”
Bobbi Jill was waiting by Mike’s Buick. She waved at him, then saw me and immediately turned away, as if interested in the empty football field and the rangeland beyond. It was a gesture everyone in school had gotten used to. The scar from the accident had healed to a fat red string. She tried to cover it with cosmetics, which only made it more noticeable.
Mike said, “I tell her to quit with the powder already, it makes her look like an advertisement for Soames’s Mortuary, but she won’t listen. I also tell her I’m not going with her out of pity, or so she won’t swallow any more pills. She says she believes me, and maybe she does. On sunny days.”
I watched him hurry to Bobbi Jill, grab her by the waist, and swing her around. I sighed, feeling a little stupid and a lot stubborn. Part of me wanted to do the damn play. Even if it was good for nothing else, it would fill the time while I was waiting for my own show to start. But I didn’t want to get hooked into the life of Jodie in more ways than I already was. Like any possible long-term future with Sadie, my relationship with the town needed to be on hold.
If everything went just right, it was possible I could wind up with the girl, the gold watch, and everything. But I couldn’t count on that no matter how carefully I planned. Even if I succeeded I might have to run, and if I didn’t get away, there was a good chance that my good deed on behalf of the world would be rewarded by life in prison. Or the electric chair in Huntsville.
5
It was Deke Simmons who finally trapped me into saying yes. He did it by telling me I’d be nuts to even consider it. I should have recognized that Oh, Br’er Fox, please don’t th’ow me in that briar patch shtick, but he was very sly about it. Very subtle. A regular Br’er Rabbit, you might say.
We were in my living room drinking coffee on a Saturday afternoon while some old movie played on my snow-fuzzy TV—cowboys in Fort Hollywood standing off two thousand or so attacking Indians. Outside, more rain was falling. There must have been at least a few sunny days during the winter of ’62, but I can’t recall any. All I can remember are cold fingers of drizzle always finding their way to the barbered nape of my neck in spite of the turned-up collar of the sheepskin jacket I’d bought to replace the ranch coat.
“You don’t want to worry about that damn play just because Ellen Dockerty’s got her underwear all in a bunch about it,” Deke said. “Finish your book, get a bestseller, and never look back. Live the good life in New York. Have a drink with Norman Mailer and Irwin Shaw at the White Horse Tavern.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. John Wayne was blowing a bugle. “I don’t think Norman Mailer has to worry too much about me. Irwin Shaw, either.”
“Also, you had such a success with Of Mice and Men,” he said. “Anything you did as a follow-up would probably be a disappointment by compar— oh, jeez, look at that! John Wayne just got an arrow through his hat! Lucky it was the twenty-gallon deluxe!”
I was more miffed by the idea that my second effort might fall short than I should have been. It made me think about how Sadie and I couldn’t quite equal our first performance on the dance floor, despite our best efforts.
Deke seemed completely absorbed in the TV as he said, “Besides, Ratty Sylvester has expressed an interest in the junior-senior. He’s talking about Arsenic and Old Lace. Says he and the wife saw it in Dallas two years ago and it was a regular ole knee-slapper.”
Good God, that chestnut. And Fred Sylvester of the Science Department as director? I wasn’t sure I’d trust Ratty to direct a grammar school fire drill. If a talented but still very damp-around-the-edges actor like Mike Coslaw ended up with Ratty at the helm, it could set his maturing process back five years. Ratty and Arsenic and Old Lace. Jesus wept.
“There wouldn’t be time to put on anything really good, anyway,” Deke went on. “So I say let Ratty take the fall. I never liked the scurrying little sumbitch, anyway.”
Nobody really liked him, so far as I could tell, except maybe for Mrs. Ratty, who scurried by his side to every school and faculty function, wrapped in acres of organdy. But he wouldn’t be the one to take the fall. That would be the kids.
“They could put on a variety show,” I said. “There’d be time enough for that.”
“Oh, Christ, George! Wallace Beery just took an arrow in the shoulder! I think he’s a goner!”
“Deke?”
“No, John Wayne’s dragging him to safety. This old shoot-em-up doesn’t make a lick of sense, but I love it, don’t you?”
“Did you hear what I said?”
A commercial came on. Keenan Wynn climbed down off a bulldozer, doffed his hardhat, and told the world he’d walk a mile for a Camel. Deke turned to me. “No, I must have missed it.”
Sly old fox. As if.
“I said there’d be time to put on a variety show. A revue. Songs, dances, jokes, and a bunch of sketches.”
“Everything but girls doing the hootchie-koo? Or were you thinking of that, too?”
“Don’t be a dope.”
“So that makes it vaudeville. I always liked vaudeville. ‘Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are,’ and all that.”
He dragged his pipe out of the pocket of his cardigan, stuffed it with Prince Albert, and fired it up.
“You know, we actually used to do something like that down to the Grange. The show was called Jodie Jamboree. Not since the late forties, though. Folks got a little embarrassed by it, although no one ever came right out and said so. And vaudeville wasn’t what we called it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It was a minstrel show, George. All the cowboys and farmhands joined in. They wore blackface, sang and danced, told jokes in what they imagined was a Negro dialect. More or less based on Amos ’n Andy.”
I began to laugh. “Did anyone play the banjo?”
“As a matter of fact, on a couple of occasions our current principal did.”
“Ellen played the banjo in a minstrel show?”
“Careful, you’re starting to speak in iambic pentameter. That can lead to delusions of grandeur, pard.”
I leaned forward. “Tell me one of the jokes.”
Deke cleared his throat, and began speaking in two deep voices.
“Say dere, Brother Tambo, what did you buy dat jar of Vaseline fo’?
“Well I b’leeves it was fo’ty-nine cent!”
He looked at me expectantly, and I realized that had been the punchline.
“Did they laugh?” I almost feared the answer.
“Split their guts and hollered for more. You heard those jokes around the square for weeks after.” He looked at me solemnly, but his eyes were twinkling like Christmas lights. “We’re a small town. Our needs when it comes to humor are quite humble. Our idea of Rabelaisian wit is a blind feller slipping on a banana peel.”
I sat thinking. The western came back on, but Deke seemed to have lost interest in it. He was watching me.
“That stuff could still work,” I said.
“George, that stuff always does.”
“It wouldn’t need to be funny black fellers, either.”
“Couldn’t do it that way anymore, anyway,” he said. “Maybe in Louisiana or Alabama, but not on the way to Austin, which the folks at the Slimes Herald call Comsymp City. And you wouldn’t want to, would you?”
“No. Call me a bleeding-heart, but I find the idea repulsive. And why bother? Corny jokes … boys in big old suits with padded shoulders instead of cornpone overalls … girls in knee-high flapper dresses with lots of fringes … I’d love to see what Mike Coslaw could do with a comedy skit… .”
“Oh, he’d kill it,” Deke said, as if that were a foregone conclusion. “Pretty good idea. Too bad you d
on’t have time to try it out.”
I started to say something, but then another of those lightning flashes hit me. It was just as bright as the one that had lit up my brain when Ivy Templeton had said that her neighbors across the street could see into her living room.
“George? Your mouth is open. The view is good but not appetizing.”
“I could make time,” I said. “If you could talk Ellie Dockerty into one condition.”
He got up and snapped off the TV without a single glance, although the fighting between Duke Wayne and the Pawnee Nation had now reached the critical point, with Fort Hollywood burning merry hell in the background. “Name it.”
I named it, then said, “I’ve got to talk to Sadie. Right now.”
6
She was solemn at first. Then she began to smile. The smile became a grin. And when I told her the idea that had come to me at the end of my conversation with Deke, she threw her arms around me. But that wasn’t good enough for her, so she climbed until she could wrap her legs around me, as well. There was no broom between us that day.
“It’s brilliant! You’re a genius! Will you write the script?”
“You bet. It won’t take long, either.” Corny old jokes were already flying around in my head: Coach Borman looked at the orange juice for twenty minutes because the can said CONCENTRATE. Our dog had an ingrown tail, we had to X-ray him to find out if he was happy. I rode on a plane so old that one restroom was marked Orville and the other was marked Wilbur. “But I need plenty of help with other stuff. What it comes down to is I need a producer. I’m hoping you’ll take the job.”
“Sure.” She slipped back to the floor with her body still pressed against mine. This produced a regrettably brief flash of bare leg as her skirt pulled up. She began to pace her living room, smoking furiously. She tripped over the easy chair (for probably the sixth or eighth time since we’d been on intimate terms) and caught her balance without even seeming to notice, although she was going to have a pretty fine bruise on her shin by nightfall.
“If you’re thinking twenties-style flapper stuff, I can get Jo Peet to run up the costumes.” Jo was the new head of the Home Ec Department, having succeeded to the position when Ellen Dockerty was confirmed as principal.
“That’s great.”
“Most of the Home Ec girls love to sew … and to cook. George, we’ll need to serve evening meals, won’t we? If the rehearsals run extra long? And they will, because we’re starting awfully late.”
“Yes, but just sandwiches—”
“We can do better than that. Lots. And music! We’ll need music! It’ll have to be recorded, because the band could never pull a thing like this together in time.” And then, together, we said “Donald Bellingham!” in perfect harmony.
“What about advertising?” I asked. We were starting to sound like Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, getting ready to put on a show in Aunt Milly’s barn.
“Carl Jacoby and his Graphic Design kids. Posters not just here but all over town. Because we want the whole town to come, not just the relatives of the kids in the show. Standing room only.”
“Bingo,” I said, and kissed her nose. I loved her excitement. I was getting pretty excited myself.
“What do we say about the benefit aspect?” Sadie asked.
“Nothing until we’re sure we can make enough money. We don’t want to raise any false hopes. What do you think about taking a run to Dallas with me tomorrow and asking some questions?”
“Tomorrow’s Sunday, hon. After school on Monday. Maybe even before it’s out, if you can get period seven free.”
“I’ll get Deke to come out of retirement and cover Remedial English,” I said. “He owes me.”
7
Sadie and I went to Dallas on Monday, driving fast to get there before the close of business hours. The office we were looking for turned out to be on Harry Hines Boulevard, not far from Parkland Memorial. There we asked a bushel of questions, and Sadie gave a brief demonstration of what we were after. The answers were more than satisfactory, and two days later I began my second-to-last show-biz venture, as director of Jodie Jamboree, An All-New, All-Hilarious Vaudeville Song & Dance Show. And all to benefit A Good Cause. We didn’t say what that cause was, and nobody asked.
Two things about the Land of Ago: there’s a lot less paperwork and a hell of a lot more trust.
8
Everybody in town did turn out, and Deke Simmons was right about one thing: those lame jokes never seemed to get old. Not fifteen hundred miles from Broadway, at least.
In the persons of Jim LaDue (who wasn’t bad, and could actually sing a little) and Mike Coslaw (who was flat-out hilarious), our show was more Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis than Mr. Bones and Mr. Tambo. The skits were of the knockabout type, and with a couple of athletes to perform them, they worked better than they probably had a right to. In the audience, knees were slapped and buttons were busted. Probably a few girdles were popped, as well.
Ellen Dockerty dragged her banjo out of retirement; for a lady with blue hair, she played a mean breakdown. And there was hootchie-koo after all. Mike and Jim persuaded the rest of the football team to perform a spirited can-can wearing petticoats and bloomers down south and nothing but skin up north. Jo Peet found wigs for them, and they stopped the show. The town ladies seemed especially crazy about those bare-chested young men, wigs and all.
For the finale, the entire cast paired off and filled the gymnasium stage with frenetic swing-dancing as “In the Mood” blared from the speakers. Skirts flew; feet flashed; football players (now dressed in zoot suits and stingy-brim hats) spun limber girls. Most of the latter were cheerleaders who already knew a few things about how to cut a rug.
The music ended; the laughing, winded cast stepped forward to take their bows; and as the audience rose to its feet for the third (or maybe it was the fourth) time since the curtain went up, Donald started up “In the Mood” again. This time the boys and girls scampered to opposite sides of the stage, grabbed the dozens of cream pies waiting for them on tables in the wings, and began to pelt each other. The audience roared its approval.
This part of the show our cast had known about and looked forward to, although since no actual pies had been flung during rehearsals, I wasn’t sure how it would play out. Of course it went splendidly, as cream-pie fights always do. So far as the kids knew this was the climax, but I had one more trick up my sleeve.
As they came forward to take their second bows, faces dripping cream and costumes splattered, “In the Mood” started up for the third time. Most of the kids looked around, puzzled, and so did not see Faculty Row rise to its feet holding the cream pies Sadie and I had stashed beneath their seats. The pies flew, and the cast was doused for the second time. Coach Borman had two pies, and his aim was deadly: he got both his quarterback and his star defenseman.
Mike Coslaw, face dripping cream, began to bellow: “Mr. A! Miz D! Mr. A! Miz D!”
The rest of the cast took it up, then the audience, clapping in rhythm. We went up onstage, hand-in-hand, and Bellingham started that goddam record yet again. The kids formed lines on either side of us, shouting “Dance! Dance! Dance!”
We had no choice, and although I was convinced my girlfriend would go sliding in all that cream and break her neck, we were perfect for the first time since the Sadie Hawkins. At the end of it, I squeezed both of Sadie’s hands, saw her little nod—Go on, go for it, I trust you—and shot her between my legs. Both of her shoes flew into the first row, her skirt skidded deliriously up her thighs … and she came magically to her feet in one piece, with her hands first held out to the audience—which was going insane—and then to the sides of her cream-smeared skirt, in a ladylike curtsey.
The kids turned out to have a trick up their sleeves, as well, one almost certainly instigated by Mike Coslaw, although he would never own up to it. They had saved some pies back, and as we stood there, soaking up the applause, we were hit by at least a dozen, flying from all directions. A
nd the crowd, as they say, goes wild.
Sadie pulled my ear close to her mouth, wiped whipped cream from it with her pinky, and whispered: “How can you leave all this?”
9
And it still wasn’t over.
Deke and Ellen walked to center stage, finding their way almost magically around the streaks, splatters, and clots of cream. No one would have dreamed of tossing a cream pie at either of them.
Deke raised his hands for silence, and when Ellen Dockerty stepped forward, she spoke in a clear classroom voice that carried easily over the murmurs and residual laughter.
“Ladies and gentleman, tonight’s performance of Jodie Jamboree will be followed by three more.” This brought another wave of applause.
“These are benefit performances,” Ellie went on when the applause died down, “and it pleases me—yes, it pleases me very much—to tell you to whom the benefit will accrue. Last fall, we lost one of our valued students, and we all mourned the passing of Vincent Knowles, which came far, far, far too soon.”
Now there was dead silence from the audience.
“A girl you all know, one of the leading lights of our student body, was badly scarred in that accident. Mr. Amberson and Miss Dunhill have arranged for Roberta Jillian Allnut to have facial reconstructive surgery this June, in Dallas. There will be no cost to the Allnut family; I’m told by Mr. Sylvester, who has served as the Jodie Jamboree accountant, that Bobbi Jill’s classmates—and this town—have assured that all the costs of the surgery will be paid in full.”
There was a moment of quiet as they processed this, then they leaped to their feet. The applause was like summer thunder. I saw Bobbi Jill herself on the bleachers. She was weeping with her hands over her face. Her parents had their arms around her.
This was one night in a small town, one of those burgs off the main road that nobody cares about much except for the people who live there. And that’s okay, because they care. I looked at Bobbi Jill, sobbing into her hands. I looked at Sadie. There was cream in her hair. She smiled. So did I. She mouthed I love you, George. I mouthed back I love you, too. That night I loved all of them, and myself for being with them. I never felt so alive or happy to be alive. How could I leave all this, indeed?