“The average of ten students’ test scores was sixty-nine. Three students scored seventy-five, sixty-seven, and forty-four, respectively. Three students scored eighty-six and two students scored fifty-one. The other two students received the same score. What were their scores?” Hank Wilson mumbled, reading a problem in his workbook.
“Seventy-two, duh,” Otis Ray, who had a talent for solving story problems, muttered without realizing he was thinking out loud.
“Shut up.”
“You shut up.”
“No, you.”
“Stop kicking me.”
“Then shut up.”
“Hey, Oats, phone for you!” called Greg, his dad, from the small office around the side of the open kitchen area. “It’s Bobby Lee Crenshaw. Remember him?”
“Uh, sure, just a minute.”
“Come on, dude, don’t keep the man waiting.” Greg sounded annoyed, but then he always sounded a little annoyed lately. Oats took his sweet time pushing back his chair and walking over to the office. It was unusual for someone like Bobby Lee, an old guitar-player friend of his parents, to be calling him.
“Yo,” Otis Ray mumbled into the phone, ignoring his dad’s grimaced warning that he’d better be polite or else.
“Hey, Oats, what are you up to this summer? Got any big plans?”
“Uh, nope, not really. Lollipopalooza got cancelled, so I guess I’m just hanging around here.”
“Well then, I have a proposition for you. Here’s the deal.” Bobby Lee went on to explain that after many years of working as a sideman in other people’s bands, he’d finally scored a record deal of his own. The track his label had chosen to be promoted to country radio as the first single was an up-tempo country-rocker called “Not if I See You First” that featured a harmonica solo. The guy who played on the session got called out on tour with a bigger act, and Bobby Lee needed a blues harp really bad at the last minute. He was wondering, was there any chance Otis Ray could fill in for a six-week tour?
“I’ll have to talk to Greg and Sarah Jean, and my manager will call you about the money stuff, but what do you think?” Bobby Lee asked.
Oats didn’t have to think; he was in from the get-go. But parental permission hadn’t been easy. It seemed like a no-brainer, a chance to play the same fairs and festivals as Lollipopalooza, only on the big stage opening up for real stars, not in-between the fire-eating jugglers and the church-sponsored fife and drum parades on the kids’ stage, where everyone’s just killing time waiting for the Weird Al box office to open anyway. You can’t imagine how much talking had to happen before he could say yes. Otis Ray’s parents closed the bedroom door and discussed his gig fate as though they didn’t know he was standing right outside trying to hear everything they were saying.
“He’s so young, and you know…” His mom, Sarah Jean, sighed.
“But he is a pro. He’d learn so much, and Bobby Lee promised he’d keep an eye out,” his dad, Greg, answered.
“Do you really think we can trust Bobby Lee to keep his promises? I mean all of his promises…”
“Sweetheart, the man has a child in Nashville. It’s not like he’s unfamiliar with the concept.”
“You mean Charlotte raises his child while he’s out touring fifty weeks a year. What does he know about kids?”
“He has one, and he was one,” Greg said matter-of-factly.
“Um, still is a kid, is more like it,” Sarah Jean snarled. (
What’s her problem with Bobby Lee, anyway?)
“OK, I know, but it would be such a great experience. What’s Oats supposed to do all summer, sit around here and argue with us about chores? It’ll be like sleep-away camp—one of those music camps—only he’ll be doing the real thing. Who knows? It might even be a big career break for him.” (
Go, Greg, go!
)
“What if something bad happens? I’d never forgive myself.”
“We can get Oats a cell phone. They’re not going to Mars. Listen, Pete is tour manager on this one; you know he’ll keep an eye on Oats. That way we don’t have to rely on Bobby Lee so much.” Pete was another old family friend, and also a skilled and experienced tour manager.
“Will you call Pete?”
“Sure, we can both talk to him,” Greg reassured her.
“But he’s so young!”
“Aw, Sarah Jean, this is a chance for Oats to grow up some. It’ll be a great experience for him…”
After about five hundred of these circular-type discussions it was finally decided that it would be OK to say yes, under certain stringent conditions, but still—Otis Ray was going on tour; a real one that presumably didn’t involve hula hoop acts or tap-dancing twins. What happened next was that Hank Wilson developed chicken pox and then a non–life-threatening but serious complication, and people started worrying more about him—which was great news for all concerned, especially Hank Wilson because he loved attention.
So before too long there came a night when Otis Ray Pixlie found himself cleaning and tuning all his harps and packing them just so in his green valise, like he always did before a tour. Then he rolled up some shirts and underwear in his duffel bag and sat on the front porch of the Dewdrop Inn, trying to look like an experienced blues-harp legend and waiting for that big old tour bus to come barreling up the gravel driveway.
*
As the sky grew lighter, Oats pulled out his shades and kept on playing. He figured a guy on the road has to get used to waiting around and find ways to pass the time when he’s alone. He started working on his bending technique, trying to perfect the overblow on the six hole, when he felt, more than saw, Eddie sit down on the steps next to him.
“Two stupid walruses fall in the ocean,” Eddie whispered. “They travel to the ocean floor two hundred and twenty feet below at a constant speed of one-tenth of a mile per hour for every hundred pounds they weigh, but one of them makes it there about two minutes quicker. If the lighter one weighs three hundred pounds, and the only thing to eat is live gullible penguins, and each gullible penguin weighs only five pounds, how many additional gullible penguins did the fatter stupid walrus eat before drowning like a moron?”
Oats had to think for a couple of seconds.
“Nineteen,” he answered. “OK, here’s one for you.”
“Hit me.”
“Aging silent film comedian Baggy-Pants Albacore had made a career out of slipping and falling flat on his back. Unfortunately, due to a shoddy contract and a life of hard liquor, Mr. Albacore is now completely broke and in desperate need of a $53,000 hernia operation. Fortunately, a wealthy but sadistic fan named Irving P. McHutchilence has agreed to pay Mr. Albacore handsomely for a private performance at the rate of $2,000 per fall. Unfortunately, the doctor says that each fall will further complicate the surgery and add an additional $1,375 to the bill. How many times does Mr. Albacore have to fall flat on his back for Mr. McHutchilence before he can finally free himself of the agonizing pain?”
“McHutchilence? What kind of a name is that?”
“Quit stalling,” Oats said.
“Oh, OK. Eighty-five times, unless he dies first. But McHutchilence?”
“Why not? Hey, what are you doing up so early, man?”
“I came to see you off,” Eddie answered, suddenly whispering again.
Eddie was a tall, dark-haired kid from the nearby Pomo reservation, and Otis Ray’s best friend. Along with being an even match for Oats at story problems Eddie had always had a consuming passion for tractors. He knew every make and model by heart and collected pictures of unusual ones. This made him a bona-fide geek and he knew it, even if he was one of the coolest-looking dudes at school. No one, including Eddie, knew why he had a tendency to whisper.
“I’m just waiting for the tour bus,” Oats said unnecessarily.
“Cool.” Eddie took a crumpled-up paper bag out of his pocket. “Hey, I brought you something for the road.” He handed over the bag, and Oats looked inside to see three brightly colored condoms in shiny wrappers, alongside a melting Hershey bar.
It happens that people with red hair and freckles blush easily, even if they are widely renowned boy-genius harmonica players.
“Uh, thanks, man.”
The screen door slammed, announcing the arrival of Hank Wilson Pixlie-Carson, the world’s most annoying human. Hank Wilson was almost six years younger than Oats, a lanky and athletic type with long straight hair that bleached out almost white in the summer. But his hair was stringy that morning, quite a fashion look along with his chicken pox pimples and Oats’ hand-me-down cowboy pajamas. His presence on the steps saved the two boys from further discussion about the condoms, plus even an annoying little brother can be missed when a guy’s on the road, so Oats was secretly glad for an extra chance to say goodbye, even though he would never actually have said so.
“Hey,” said Hank Wilson. “I got a story problem for you. Two ducks are sitting in the bathtub. One of them says ‘Pass the soap.’ The other one says, ‘No soap, radio.’”
“Uh, that’s not a story problem; it’s not even really a joke,” Oats said.
“No, it’s one of those fake jokes people tell you to see if you’ll laugh anyway, even though you can’t get it ’cause there’s nothing to get,” Eddie explained.
“Well, I think it’s funny,” Hank Wilson insisted.
Oats pulled out the chocolate bar and stuffed the bag with the condoms into his jacket pocket; then split the chocolate three ways and handed a piece each to Eddie and Hank Wilson.
“Dude, what’s the deal about this tour anyway? How come you’re not going out with the hula hoop crowd this time?” Eddie had a crush on Hazel, a girl with long curly hair and a purple spangled leotard, who did an amazing hula hoop routine in the Lollipopalooza tour.
“I told you, man. You know my parents’ friend Bobby Lee Crenshaw? He does shows here sometimes. He got his own label deal and a tour and needed a harp player, so…”
“I think I know who you mean. He’s an old red-haired guy, right?”
“Yeah, good picker, though. He’s usually a sideman for other people. My mom met him, like, a million years ago when she was a backup singer.”
“You better watch out for that guy, Oats,” Hank Wilson said quietly.
“Who? Bobby Lee?”
“Yeah, he looks at you funny.”
“Oh man,” Eddie chimed in. “What if he’s gay for you? What if you’re like, sleeping in your bunk on the bus and he sneaks in?”
“That is such a crock of shit.” Oats was about to add some more about that, when the screen door slammed again.
“I don’t believe this! Chocolate before breakfast? Shame on you!” It was the boys’ Great-aunt Perle. Perle was a wiry woman with short graying hair, and her nephews thought that the coolest thing about her was that she knew yoga and could twist herself into a pretzel with her legs behind her neck. Perle made a big point of the fact that she only wore natural fibers and ate organic locally grown food, and though she lived in San Francisco, she was staying with the family to help out until Hank Wilson got better and their mom was out of her cast. Perle felt about chocolate bars the way some people feel about crystal meth.
“Sarah Jean,” Perle shouted. “These boys are eating chocolate. And you with the chicken pox,” she scolded. “Shame on you.”
Perle lunged at Hank Wilson and he dove under the porch just in time, stuffing the rest of his chocolate into his mouth before she could grab it away. Of course all the scuffling brought everyone else outside. Oats’ mom, Sarah Jean, on her crutches with her hair wild all over the place, and his dad, Greg, wearing sweats and a San Francisco Giants baseball cap appeared in the doorway, and everyone started talking at once.
Sarah Jean motioned Oats over, so he got up to give her one of those hugs moms love. She held onto his shoulders really tight and held his gaze with her own.
“I know you know how to behave,” she began. “But sometimes when grown men go out on the road they can get a little crazy. You just stay close to Pete and Bobby Lee and don’t let anyone put you in a situation that might be…”
“Mo-o-om, I’m not a baby. And yes, I remembered to pack my toothbrush and I have my cell phone charger in my bag. And if the guys start watching porn or something I’ll go read a book. I promise.”
“Yeah right,” whispered Eddie.
“OK, I know, I know, but remember…” And she kept on holding her son’s shoulders and delivering last-minute instructions while Perle lectured Hank Wilson about the chocolate and Greg started banging a surf beat on the porch railing because it was an awkward moment and he was a drummer and they bang on anything you put in front of them.
They were all still at it when the tour bus arrived. So instead of pulling off looking like a cool loner musician waiting by some mythical crossroads, the first impression Oats gave the guys in Bobby Lee’s band was that of a kid with a wacked-out family, some of them in cowboy pajamas, some of them yelling and banging on things. Sometimes a guy just can’t look cool no matter how hard he tries.
The bus pulled up with a hydraulic-brake screech, and Bobby Lee jumped down out of the shotgun seat and took a long, slow look around at the menagerie on the porch that called itself Otis Ray’s family.
Bobby Lee walked over to Otis Ray.
“You ready to roll?”
“Yes sir.”
“Then let’s roll. The boys are waiting.”
Bobby Lee ruffled Oats’ hair and pointed toward the bus, then walked over toward Sarah Jean and Greg.
Eddie leaned over and whispered, “See what I mean? He’s queer for you. Watch out for that guy.”
“Bullshit, it’s you he wants.” Oats gave Eddie a shove and held out his hand for a fist bump before picking up his duffel bag and harps.
“Bye, man,” Eddie said softly. Oats turned and waved, then disappeared inside of the bus.
Meanwhile, back on the porch, Sarah Jean extracted one more solemn promise from Bobby Lee to keep Oats safe. Finally, Bobby Lee turned away and, after delivering a high-five to Greg, walked toward the tour bus.
Oats leaned out a window to see everyone waving and yelling all at once, and Eddie looking pretty forlorn but kind of brave and tall, resigning himself to a summer hanging out with the extremely annoying Hank Wilson Pixlie-Carson. Then, just as they were about to pull out of the driveway Oats heard Greg say, “OK, gang—count of three: one…two…three…” and the entire family turned around at the same second, pulled down their pants, and mooned the bus, even Aunt Perle if you can believe it, to the delight of the driver and especially all Otis Ray’s new bandmates. Everyone cheered and yelled out the windows, but a certain harp player was blushing so hard by then that he thought his whole head must have looked like a lobster.