Baby, Would I Lie?

31

When Sara learned, in the Branson Beacon (reading the local newspaper was both good sense and good manners), that Ray Jones would be among the stars to appear on Sunday afternoon at a charitable fund-raiser for the local hospital, rather alarmingly named Skaggs, she knew she had to go. The setting was a big tent in the parking lot of the Grand Palace, the four-thousand-seat theater and video complex that was an elaborately pillared and porticoed white Dixie plantation house fronting a huge, sinister, featureless gray box big enough to hold all the world’s Scud missiles, as though Tara had been attached to a nuclear plant. The huge yellow-and-white-striped tent in front of this harridan with a painted face flapped in the fitful breeze, and at 12:40 Sara joined the line of families snaking slowly forward toward the volunteers at the folding tables, who took their money and peeled off little orange tickets from giant rolls. Hand-lettered red-on-white signs taped to the front of the folding tables read SUGGESTED DONATION $4.

“Press,” Sara said, an automatic reaction, when she reached the volunteer, and showed her Trend ID.

The girl, who was probably herself named Skaggs, gave Sara a look of deep dislike and mistrust. “Jested donation four dollar,” she said.

Oh well. Sara dug a five out of her wallet, handed it over, waited for change, and got an orange ticket instead. The volunteer looked past her at the next in line, and Sara said, “Could I have a receipt?”

The volunteer’s antipathy increased. “A what?”

“Oh, never mind,” Sara said, and proceeded to the entrance to the tent, where a scraggly Skaggs volunteer who was possibly trying to grow a mustache ripped her ticket in half, gave her back one part, and she entered the tent.

It was merely an open space, without seating of any kind, except for the folding chairs under the people selling T-shirts behind the trencher tables along the rear. Families milled on the blacktop under the tent, and at the far end a temporary stage had been set up, flanked by enough giant speakers and amplifiers to send a message to Mars.

Sara was lithe and slender, a rarity in that crowd. She slithered through the families, intending at first to establish herself all the way up front, but then she took another look at those speakers and amplifiers and veered off instead to a fairly quiet spot midway down the right side.

Already, children were bored and crying. Already, fathers and mothers were holding fractious infants in their arms and bouncing leadenly from foot to foot. Already, people everywhere looked as though they’d been on this death march for months. But none of them would sit down. A rock-and-roll audience, or a jazz audience, or even a classical music audience, in this situation, would arrange newspapers or jackets or something on the blacktop and sit down, but there’s a sweet instinctive formality to the country fans. Sitting on a blacktop parking lot would not be seemly, so they wouldn’t do it. They would stand, no matter. After all, suffering is the human condition, as the country families well know, here below.

The show was supposed to start at one and last an hour and a half, so as not to steal any audience from the regular commercial three o’clock shows in the theaters up and down the Strip. And by God, at exactly one o’clock, a fellow in a black frock coat and a black string tie came bounding up onto the stage, grabbed a microphone, grinned, and waited while all those hundreds of people who’d recognized him and wanted to applaud their recognition gave him an (necessarily standing) ovation. Sara realized she was undoubtedly the only person inside this tent who did not know who Mr. Frock Coat was.

She missed Jack; already she missed him. His plane out of Springfield would have been airborne for about half an hour now, on its way to St. Louis — for the change of equipment, as the airlines say, for some reason not wanting to acknowledge that they use airplanes to move people from place to place. The new equipment would take Jack to New York and their dear little apartment on West Eleventh Street. She missed him. She missed the dear little apartment. She missed New York. But mostly, she wished he were right here in Branson this second, this instant, standing next to her here inside this tent, so there’d be somebody around she could share her reactions with, someone she could understand who would understand her. It’s never an entirely comfortable feeling to be alone deep inside another tribe’s territory.

Mr. Frock Coat thanked everybody for the warm welcome. He reminded them how much Skaggs Community Hospital had done for folks over the years and he thanked them for helping to support that good work. He thanked the performers who were about to come out here and give selflessly of their time and talent so the good work of Skaggs Community Hospital could go on. And he said he didn’t want to take up any more of everybody’s time; he’d just introduce the first artist, who was Soandso!

Soandso was a somewhat hefty, tall woman dressed entirely in vermilion, head to wrist to toe, covered with bugle beads. Her hair, of which she had a lot, was a clashing orange in color, and the electric guitar she carried displayed most of the other shades of the red section of the spectrum. Her eyelashes were long enough to hang laundry on, her smile would light Central Park, and when she thanked everybody for the applause that had welcomed her, she had a voice like a backhoe.

But it was powerful, all right, and even melodic when used for purposes of singing. Soandso was a belter; she stood well back from the microphone and delivered two songs about hard times on the field of love. Both songs were clearly well known to the crowd and well liked by them. After the applause following the second, Soandso said, “You’re all gonna see Ray Jones in a little while,” and that got its own rush of fervent applause, following which Soandso said, “Ray’s havin more than his share of troubles these days, but he’s always been a good friend to me and he’s a fine songwriter. I’d like to dedicate this to Ray and wish him the best.” And she did a gravelly honky-tonk version of the song Ray had sung to Sara in the bus: “It’s Time to Write Another Love Song (This Time, The Song’s for You).”

Big applause. Soandso blew kisses, waved her guitar, dis-attached the guitar from the amplifiers, and jounced away, revealing a behind that looked like the world’s largest candy apple. Mr. Frock Coat bounded back and introduced somebody else, and Sara spent her time watching the audience, trying to think about Ray Jones and his trial — trials, there was also the income-tax thing — and his relationship with his audience, these people here. What did it mean? What could she make it mean, in a piece for Trend, that wouldn’t make Jack, or Hiram Farley, throw up?

Then at last, Ray Jones was introduced, and he got a whole lot of applause. When it died down, he said, “You know, Branson’s my home, been my home for a while now, and if I feel like maybe I can do something to help Skaggs Community Hospital, it’s mostly a selfish act, because it’s my community and my community hospital, and I can’t tell you how happy I am, as a local boy, that they are there. So thank you all for supporting their good work. And now” — strum the guitar — “I’d like to sing about my favorite girl. Anybody out there with that name? My favorite girl’s name?”

Squealing, absolute squealing, from the crowd. Girls and women of all ages jumped up and down, waving their hands over their heads, yelling, “Me! Me!”

And yelling something else, too: a name. Their own name, it must be, and Ray Jones, like so many songwriters before him, must have written a song to a particular girl’s name. A popular name among the country fans, from the agitation in the crowd. What were they shouting?

Fllrrumm went the guitar, and Ray Jones sang:

Sara couldn’t make a sociological statement out of that one at all.