Page 62 of Never Flinch

“I hear that. Until the lights go down and the music starts, it’s all grunt work. Movie crews, carny crews, the rock and roll army… all basically the same. Sweat equity.”

The auditorium is half-lit. Jerome spots a stout lady sitting at a piano stage left, playing what has to be “Bring It On Home to Me.” Barbara is halfway up the main seating area (with recently added balconies, the Mingo seats 7,500), carrying a boxy Yamaha gadget to the sound engineer, whose mixing board looks like it’s only partially assembled. Barb’s wearing high-waisted jeans held up with suspenders, a Rolling StonesSteel Wheelstee (which Jerome is pretty sure was filched from their parents’ attic), and a red bandanna around her smooth brown forehead. Jerome thinks she looks like a roadie if ever a roadie therewas, which isn’t surprising. Barbara has a chameleon-like quality. At a country club party, she could wear an evening dress and a sparkly faux-diamond headband with similar ease.

“Barb!” he says. “I brought your car back.” He hands her the keys.

“No dents or dings?”

“Not a single one.”

“Ross, this is my brother Jerome. Jerome, this is Ross MacFarland, our FOH.”

“Don’t know what that is, but pleased to meet you,” Jerome says, shaking MacFarland’s hand.

“Front of the house,” MacFarland says. “Although for our show, I’ll be mixing right here. The Program Director doesn’t like it because those are prime seats he can’t sell—”

“Program directors never likeanythingwe do,” Tones says. “It’s part of their dubious charm. Gibson ain’t as bad as some I’ve worked with.”

Someone yells, “Three o’clocks, everybody! Threes!”

Barbara shouts, “I’ll be right there, Acey!”

A woman says, “Who might this handsome young man be?”

Jerome turns and sees the stout piano lady making her way up the aisle. He realizes belatedly that this woman, dressed in a frumpy jumper and bulging moccasins, is Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Sista Bessie.

“Betty, this is my brother Jerome. The other writer in the family.”

Betty shakes like a man. “You got a talented sister, Jerome. And you not bad yourself. She gave me your book and I’m partway through it already.”

“Barbara!” someone bawls. “Spikes and stands after three o’clocks!”

Barbara turns to Jerome. “We’re non-union, but we follow most of the union rules. Three o’clock break is mandatory.” Then, raising her voice: “I heard you, Bull, was you born in a barn?”

General laughter greets this, and Betty Brady gives Barbara a quick sideways hug. “Go on now, and save me a bagel if they got such a thing in this primitive town. I want to speak to this young man.”

Barbara gives a slight frown at this, then joins Tones Kelly and Ross MacFarland, presumably heading for their three o’clock break. She looks back once, and for just a moment he sees her as she was at eight, worried that the girls at her new school wouldn’t like her.

Betty puts an arm around Jerome’s shoulders. “Does that girl listen to you?”

“Sometimes,” Jerome says, bemused.

“Did she tell you we’re collaborating on a song? Her words, my music?”

“Yes. She’s totally stoked.”

Betty begins leading Jerome down the aisle toward the stairs, her arm still around his shoulders, one extremely large breast prodding his side.

“Would she listen to you about going on the rest of the tour? Do some singin?”

Jerome stops. “She saidno?”

Betty laughs. “It’s complicated, and not just because I want her to sing some backup with the Dixie Crystals. She got a real good voice. Tess, Laverne, and Jem, they all like her, say she fits right in. The four of em were doing ‘Lollipop’ the other night,a capella.You know, that old Chordettes thing?”

Jerome doesn’t know “Lollipop,” but he knows Barbara has a good voice, and ordinarily she isn’t shy about belting it out for an audience. She played the only Black Calamity Jane in history as a high school senior and has done a couple of community theater things since then… at least before poetry became her life.

“She said no tothat?”

“Not… exactly. But when I asked her to duet with me on ‘Lowtown,’ she’s all no-no-no.”

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