Sarah Jean had her jacket on before he’d finished his sentence.
“Come on, kids,” she shouted. “I’m going to KRUM—now.”
“Wait up!” Ari cried, running to catch up. “Wait up! Let me get Maditrude.”
“I’d better call Charlotte,” Bobby Lee said as he stood up.
“He has a way of forgetting he’s got a wife,” Sarah Jean whispered to Arizona as they left the restaurant, loud enough for everyone to hear.
“I guess I’ll stay here with the boys,” Greg replied to the empty room.
Five minutes later, Sarah Jean signaled to turn onto the highway while Arizona plugged Maditrude in to the red minivan’s cigarette lighter and punched in the radio station’s coordinates. Just as they were about to zoom off onto the interstate, they heard the back door of their car open and slam shut.
“I’m coming with you,” said a determined-sounding voice from the back seat.
“What? Wait!” Arizona looked over her shoulder to see Kira sitting in the car, arms crossed.
“I’m sorry to interrupt your outing, ladies, but I’m going batshit in that weird, green place. This place is so boring. Nothing ever happens. Can I come along?”
“She’s an old friend. OK?” Arizona asked Sarah Jean.
“OK,” Sarah Jean said, not wanting to waste any more time thinking about this strange, tiny woman. “Let’s go. Conman Connie Show—here we come.”
“Turn up the radio,” Arizona added. “That way we can hear if he goes off the air.”
“Seatbelts, please,” Sarah Jean, the only mom in the car, reminded her passengers.
“Not me,” Kira chirped. “I don’t want to wrinkle my blouse!”
“Oh geez, OK, suit yourself.”
The three women rode along, listening to the interview.
“That’s gotta be Oats, all right,” Arizona remarked.
“That’s my boy,” Sarah Jean agreed proudly. “That’s his tone. No one else can make a harp sound like that.”
“Hey, maybe we should call in…” Kira suggested.
“And let him know we know where he is? He might bolt and run,” Arizona answered. “Let’s just get there as quickly as we can.”
“He does sound cute,” Kira sighed. “Sometimes I wish…”
“Hey,” asked Arizona, “I wonder where Dickie went. Last I saw him, he was deep in tête-à-tête with my husband’s girlfriend. Geez, does that sound weird or what?”
“Probably sleeping it off,” Sarah Jean answered. “Seems he had more than a few on the plane. The question is, is he sleeping it off alone…”
“You mean the cute guy with the scar?” asked Kira. “I saw him get in a car with a blonde lady, right before we left the restaurant.”
No one knew what to say to that, so they rode in silence for the next half hour or so, listening to Oats on the radio.
“In three point five miles, take exit ramp to the right,” chirped Maditrude.
They heard Conman Connie’s unmistakable “let’s wind up the interview” voice as Sarah Jean took the curve off the exit ramp a little faster than she should have.
“There it is!” shouted Arizona, “down that road. Go up to the intersection and make a U-turn.”
“No, he sounds like he’s about to go off the air. If we go all the way up there and turn around we might miss him. I’m crossing the line.” And Sarah Jean gunned the engine to make a tight U-turn across the highway—when she slammed on the brakes. Kira flew forward, followed by her enormous purse, sprinkling a shower of pastel-colored pills all over the car.
“Wha…”
“Ow!”
“Shit!”
“Oh my god.”
Only Sarah Jean had seen the drunken driver in a rent-a-car, shooting out from behind an eighteen-wheeler into the path of an oncoming bus filled with the Angels of the Lamb Drum and Bugle Corps.
*
Conman Connie kept Otis Ray Pixlie on the air a good long time, because none of the radio station’s callers were able to identify him. He finally gave up when it was almost time to sign off.
“OK, folks, I guess it’s time to let the cat out of the bag. Our mystery guest is Otis Ray Pixlie, and he’s a whippersnapper, only thirteen years old. He’ll be appearing at the California Midstate Fair with Bobby Lee Crenshaw’s band. Let’s go out on Bobby Lee’s hit song, ‘Not if I See You First.’ Say goodbye, Otis Ray.”
“Goodbye, Otis Ray,” Oats joked. And they were off the air.
“You guys…” Oats blushed, looking at Major Booty and Lonesome Al. “You knew who I was all along?”
“Yeah, we knew who you were from the get-go, Elmer.” The Major gave him a playful punch on the arm. “We live a mile away from your Dewdrop Inn and we know your people.”
“So how about you let us drive you to that gig,” said Lonesome Al.
“Sure, I guess.”
It wasn’t like he was giving in, or even forgiving anyone. It was for his fans and his self-image as a professional musician. He wasn’t sure the gig was where he wanted to be, but with all that airtime and radio promotion on the most popular live country music show in the Central Valley he’d be a fool not to show. Family crap was one thing, but what if someone came to see him, specifically, and he wasn’t there? Besides, now that he was out of danger, no longer afraid of being raped or killed, this way of thinking was an easier out than admitting to the ice-cold terror, and how much he’d missed his mom.
Or at least that’s what he told himself as they bid their farewells to the Conman and walked out the door and toward the car, after Connie insisted they say goodbye to Pepper the parrot, then loaded them down with all kinds of T-shirts and souvenir mugs and bumper stickers.
They drove back up the dirt road, to the paved road, to the interstate, and the mood in the car was jolly as they all sang along to Marshall Tucker on the eight-track.
“Whoa, road block!” Lonesome Al shouted as they came to the highway. Police sirens and flashing lights greeted them before they could see what was actually going on. Al pulled over and they walked the rest of the way to the intersection.
The last thing Oats was expecting, at that particular moment, was to see Melody’s church bus smashed into a fence on the shoulder of the highway, tangled up with a Toyota. And could that be his family’s cherry-red minivan parked at an odd angle nearby? There were two police cars with blinking lights on either end of the mess, and an ambulance was just pulling up to the accident.
“Call for backup,” Oats heard one of the ambulance crew shout to the other, as he ran to the bus. “We have a DOA.”
His first thought was,
It could be any school bus and any minivan
. Some part of him knew that a whole lot of people he cared about had just had a really awful collision on Interstate 5.
Without a word to the two men, Oats jumped out of the car and sprinted toward the accident.
“Whoa, little man.” A police officer grabbed him by the shoulder. “Stand back, kid,” but he squirmed free and darted between the vehicles to get a better view. There were band instruments strewn all over the highway, and two guys in white put a girl on a stretcher into the back of an ambulance. She had short red hair peeking out from under the blanket and once again, even though he knew it was Melody he couldn’t let himself believe that. He got down on his knees and started poking around in the mess of musical instruments. Somehow Oats decided that he needed to look for Melody’s baton, and that if he could find it, everything would be all right.
“Hey, kid!” a policeman shouted. “What do you think you’re doing there?”
Oats ignored the cop as he searching for the baton.
Major Booty and Lonesome Al had walked up behind him, unnoticed—as hard as that might be to imagine.
“Come along, kid. Let these men do their work.” Major Booty tried to nudge Oats along toward the car.
“No, I can’t. I have to find the baton.”
“It’s all right son,” Lonesome Al said. He pulled Oats’ arm toward the vehicle as Major Booty gunned the engine. Once again, the boy pulled away. Al was a tall man, but he didn’t have the Major’s brute upper-body strength, being a skinny sort. Oats wrenched free and ran toward the ambulance.
It was hard to see because his eyes were clouded over with tears. He smelled an awful acrid burning smell. He had never smelled anything like it. He was stopped short when someone grabbed him from behind.
“What the fuck! Leave me alone,” he shouted, but the person kept holding on, pinning his arms to his side. He shook the wetness out of his eyes but could not see his captor. He could smell, though, and over the sickening gasoline-and-metal odors he smelled something familiar and comforting. It was spicy and friendly and made his heart start racing even faster than it already was. What he smelled was Arizona.
“So,” she said, her arms squeezing tighter around his chest, “if I let you go will you promise to stay here and let the paramedics do their job?”
He nodded yes.
“How can I trust you?”
“You can trust me.”
“Scout’s honor?”
“Yes, geez, shit!” he said, finally pushing her hand away. “Let me go!”
His mother appeared from around the side of the minivan with a tear-streaked grin, running across the highway despite the warnings of the cops, shouting, “Oats! Oats!” as she ran toward him.
And then he did the stupidest most babyish thing ever. He buried his head in her shoulder and burst into tears.
T.L.C.
23
The Central California Medical Center hospital staff was in a tizzy of intense preparation for the accident victims. A school bus, a rental car, miraculously only one person killed but all those broken bones and blood and not enough beds to go around—doctors were paged at home and elsewhere: on golf courses, at the rodeo, at Walmart.
Once again, Bobby Lee Crenshaw had to call his record label and his manager and tell them he couldn’t make a gig. People were nice in the way they have to be in the face of such bad news, but he could tell that patience was wearing thin. Voices were edgy in a “not this again” kind of way, and he couldn’t help but wonder when the label would find an excuse to give up on him. But there were bills to pay and others to consider; Valerie’s special school headed the list.
Greg and Hoagy grabbed the boys and prepared to set off for the hospital. At the last minute, Bobby Lee asked if there was room in the car. He was barely able to comprehend the fact that a whole busload of kids, along with his longtime childhood pal, were in critical condition or worse in the same hospital where Pete had been recovering from his stroke. Bobby Lee couldn’t help deciding it was all his fault; if he hadn’t been such a coward none of this would have happened.
They got to the hospital and found the usually relaxed, competent staff tearing around in a panic. Hoagy took charge, walking around the unoccupied reception desk in search of a doctor. At one end of the corridor he saw a small group of teenagers sitting cross-legged on the floor, heads bowed as a man with broken glasses and his arm in a sling led them in a quiet prayer. At the other end he saw a small, huddled, red-haired figure collapsed in on himself with his head in his hands. He walked over, knelt down a few inches away, and stayed quietly still for a couple of minutes. Then he spoke.
“Hey, Oats, it’s me—Hoagy.”
“Hey,” the boy said quietly, without lifting up his head. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Yeah, man, it’s a bitch, ain’t it? I came to see if there was some way to help. You feel like talking?”
“Nope.”
“OK, well then…do you know where I might find one of the doctors or nurses?”
Oats pointed vaguely in the direction of the prayer circle and shrugged.
“Listen, man, I’m going to see if I can find out what’s going on. Who else is here, do you know?”
“My mom, Arizona, and her friend are around somewhere,” Oats whispered.
“You gonna be OK alone for a few minutes?” Hoagy asked. Oats shrugged again. “All right, then, I’ll be back in a flash. Don’t you run off again, now.”
Hoagy touched Oats lightly on the shoulder and stood up as Arizona came running down the hall.
“Oh, I am so glad to see you!” she cried. “Who else is here?”
“The boys are with me, and Bobby Lee and Greg, both of Oats’, um, dads.”
“Let’s not go there right now, OK? Anyway, I’m a little more concerned about someone else. Has anyone seen Stephanie? She was in Dickie’s car.”
“Dickie was here too?”
“Oh, you don’t know that part. Dickie was in the other car, his rental—the one that was crushed by the bus. He’s gone, Hoagy.”
“Aw shit, man.” Hoagy suddenly felt sick.
“I’m so sorry.” She reached out and gently touched his arm. “But they say he somehow kept more people on the bus from getting hurt. I wish I could remember exactly what happened, but it’s sort of a blur. I feel like I’m still under water.”
“You should rest up and take care of yourself, sweetheart. Let me handle this, at least for a couple of hours. Does Bobby Lee know about Dickie?”
“Probably not, if he just walked in with you.”
“Well ma’am, I think that will be my first order of business,” Hoagy said with bravado he didn’t feel. “I do think, though, that there’s a young man over there in the corner who could use a little TLC if you have any to spare. Let me handle the dead—you get dibs on the living. Deal?”
“Deal,” Arizona answered.
Hoagy wandered around until he found a restroom, where he locked the door behind him and proceeded to throw up. Then, taking a deep breath, he walked out into the hallway to find Bobby Lee and tell him his friend was dead.
*
There was nothing to do but wait. Well actually, there was nothing to do but wait and feel guilty. Bobby Lee felt guilty: his actions—or rather, inaction—all those years ago had caused both his wife’s and a young boy’s hearts to break, not to mention the death of his childhood friend.
Otis Ray felt guilty: if he hadn’t been such an immature moron and run off in a huff, no one would have had to go looking for him and Melody would be perfectly fine right now.
Arizona felt guilty. Just a moment to say the right words to Kira would have prevented her being here in this mess with her pretty faced banged up. She should, at the very least, have insisted on the seatbelt. It wasn’t like Kira really knew how to behave like an actual grown-up.