Baby, Would I Lie?

8

The map of Branson in Sara’s hotel room indicated all the attractions — that’s what they called them — along the Strip, and when Sara picked out the Ray Jones Theater, it looked as though it must be very close to the Lodge of the Ozarks, separated from it only by Mickey Gilley’s theater. Wouldn’t it be faster to go there by foot than by internal-combustion engine?

It would. Sara, the only walker in sight, reached the theater at ten minutes to eight, to find the parking lot blocked by a sawhorse bearing the sign performance sold out. She walked by it anyway and went inside to the lobby filled with theatergoers to see what her press card could do.

Nothing. The twangy little girl in the box office assured her that sold out actually meant sold out — no more seats available. The term house seats did not appear to be part of her vocabulary. Not only that, the girl informed her this evening’s performance had been sold out yesterday and that both of tomorrow’s were already sold out as of now. A seat was offered for the matinee day after tomorrow. “Maybe later,” Sara said.

“Be gone later,” the girl said complacently.

Maybe so. Still, Sara didn’t feel like planning her life that far ahead. Also, there had to be some way her press connection could be made to work for her. It was true she wanted to see Ray Jones at work, but it was also true that she wanted him to become aware of her presence in his peripheral vision, without her joining that hopeless line of media people who were trying and failing to get interviews. Long ago, she’d learned that the best way to approach celebrities was obliquely.

So she thanked the twangy girl for her advice, declined the matinee two days off, and turned away to leave. A man held the door open for her and she stepped outside and looked around, trying to decide what to do next.

“Miss?”

She turned, and it was the man who’d held the door for her. Fiftyish, he was baggily dressed and blockily built, with a worried-looking bony face. In one hand, he carried three candy bars. He said, “Excuse me, did I hear you say you were with some magazine?”

“I am, yes,” Sara said, wondering what this was about. Surely he wasn’t trying to pick her up.

He said, “I didn’t catch the name of it.”

“Trend,” Sara said, really doubting this fellow was one of Trend’s readers. Around them, other non-Trend readers straggled up the slope and into the theater.

He seemed to chew on the name for a few seconds, then said, “Weekly or monthly?”

“Weekly,” she said. Feeling obscurely compelled to explain further, she added, “We’re a New York-based service and cultural magazine. I’m here to cover the Ray Jones trial.”

“For your magazine. Trend.”

“Sure. I’m sorry, I don’t see what...” And she gestured, inviting him to do some explaining of his own.

Which he promptly did. “Oh yeah,” he said, “I oughta tell you who I am. I’m Cal Denny. I’m a friend of Ray’s. I’m kind of connected, uh, with, uh...” And he waggled the candy bars at the building beside them.

“Oh.”

“I heard you trying to get in.”

“Apparently, full is full.”

“We’re doin real good business,” he allowed.

Sara grinned. “God bless Belle Hardwick, eh?”

He looked startled, then abruptly grinned back, as though they now shared a dirty secret. “I guess you’re right,” he said. “You want to see the show?”

“In return for what?”

“Huh?” He wasn’t very quick, Cal Denny, but sooner or later he got there: “Oh!” he said, and blushed, actually blushed. “No, I just thought you’d... I heard you in there...”

“Thanks, then,” Sara said. “There’s room after all, huh?”

“Well, not really,” Cal Denny told her. “But there’s a seat in the back that’s only used two different times, by somebody in the show. You’d have to go stand by the lighting guy just those two times, and the rest you could sit down.”

“It’s a deal,” Sara said. Sticking out her hand, she said, “Sara Joslyn.”

“Hi, there,” he answered, and awkwardly shook her hand, as though not used to physical contact with a woman. Soon he let go of her hand and led her back into the theater, where they joined the shuffling throng crossing the lobby to the two interior entrances. Cal Denny led them to the doorway on the left, where what looked to be a high school boy, in a thin pink blazer too big for him, stood collecting tickets. Denny murmured a word to the boy, pointing his thumb over his shoulder at Sara, and the boy nodded and waved her on in.

Inside was a theater like any other; longer than wide, the floor sloping down toward the front, rows of red plush seating parted by two carpeted aisles, a dark red curtain closed over the stage. At the rear, a platform displaced most of the last two rows of the center section, and on it, inside a simple two-by-four railing, hulked a fairly complex-looking light board in the care of a fat man in a Yosemite Sam T-shirt and Yosemite Sam beard. This was the lighting guy.

Denny in a half whisper introduced Sara — “This lady’s a reporter. She’ll be in the Elvis seat; let her know when she has to get out of it” — and Yosemite Sam nodded hello and agreement. Then Denny showed her the Elvis seat, on the aisle next to the lighting platform, and bent down to murmur, “I gotta bring Ray his Snickers now,” showing her the candy bars.

“Oh. Right.”

He went away, and Sara watched the people come in: families, many many families; children of all ages, most of them not overweight; adults of all ages, most of them overweight — rural people, small-town people, working-class people. These are the faces in the crowd when a farm is auctioned off for back taxes. They filed in, well-behaved, cheerful, carrying soft drinks and popcorn and candy as though they were going to the movies. They found their seats and organized themselves and faced the curtain, and it opened.

Houselights down. The six people on the simple stage, formally dressed and armed with musical instruments, began to play and sing country music, none of which Sara had ever heard before. Two of them were women, slender and pretty, with important hair, both dressed in glittery tight black gowns that covered them from neck to toe and enclosed their arms to below the elbow. They played guitars. The four men wore slightly odd tuxedos; one of them played piano, one drums, one an electric bass, and one a bewildering variety of wind instruments, all lined up on a chrome rack beside him.

Which of these was Ray Jones? Sara had expected more of an impressive introduction. Was it Ray Jones’s conceit to present himself as no more than a simple sideman who’d made good?

No. None of these people was Ray Jones, which became clear at the end of the first number, when the male guitarist introduced his co-musicians and himself and then engaged in some simple comedy routines with the others before dropping into another song, this one showcasing the talents of the pianist and the singing quality of one of the girl guitarists.

So this was the warm-up act. The audience seemed content with it, laughing at the old jokes and applauding the displays of musicianship. Sara sat and waited for Ray Jones.

Tap tap, on her shoulder. It was Yosemite Sam, beckoning her to join him on his platform. She did, and he gestured for her to squeeze herself flat against the rear wall. She did that, too, while onstage another musical number loped along like horses on a bridle path, and into the seat she’d just vacated slipped Elvis Presley, complete with all the black hair and a glittery shiny white suit with gold and glass beads all over it. Onstage, the song came to an end, the audience applauded, and the lighting man swung a big spotlight hard around and switched it on just as Elvis erupted out of his seat, shouting and hollering and waving his arms over his head. Sara, against the wall, was just out of the harsh beam of white light.

The audience laughed and called out with surprise, and with the spotlight tracking him, Elvis went tearing down the aisle and up onstage, still hollering gibberish, until the male guitarist, who doubled as MC, calmed him down, and then they did the joke, which was that Elvis wanted to announce he’d just seen Glenn Miller alive in a nearby supermarket.

Glenn Miller? Did these people know who Glenn Miller was?

Apparently. They laughed and applauded this small joke and then the MC asked Elvis to sing a song as long as he was there, but Elvis said he had to rush back to the supermarket to see if Glenn Miller was still there. He ran offstage and the audience laughed and applauded some more. Yosemite Sam gestured that Sara could resume her seat, which she did, and the show went on.

A little later, the warm-up act finished, the curtain closed, and a loudspeaker voice announced, “Ladies and gentlemen — Ray Jones!”

A somewhat bulky fiftyish man in a dark blue tux, under what might be his own mussy black hair but was probably a really good rug, and carrying an acoustic guitar so adorned with bright colors and wild designs that it looked like somebody’s favorite motorcycle, came out through the center split in the red curtain and stepped over to the microphone left there by the MC. A spotlight shone on him, and the applause was long and loud and truly enthusiastic. When it died down, the man sang, in his gravelly, well-traveled voice, a sappy air called “It’s Time to Write Another Love Song (This Time, the Song’s for You).”

More applause at the end of this song and then the curtain reopened, and there were the musicians again, with more instruments than before. Ray Jones said a few words of welcome to the audience, thanking them for coming, asking them if they didn’t think this was a really terrific bunch of musicians up here (they did), making a couple of small jokes about Branson traffic and the well-known desire of all fathers everywhere to go fishing instead of to the theater, and generally making himself accommodating to the crowd. He said nothing about murder trials or tax problems or anything troublesome.

Then he strummed a chord on his guitar and said, “Now, folks, I’d like some help on this one, if you feel up to it. I think you know the words I mean, where I want you to come right in and join me. If you could do that, we could really get something going here, I’m pretty sure. And—”

The musicians started a lively, fast-paced introduction, which the audience clearly recognized; there was laughter and applause and a stirring in the seats. Then Ray Jones leaned in to the microphone and sang:

Ray Jones lifted his head and shouted over the music, “That’s your cue!”

And, on the beat, the audience en masse gave him the line:

Astounded, Sara turned to look at Yosemite Sam, who was grinning inside his beard as though remembering with pleasure every greasy meal he’d ever faced. And all through the theater, happiness was loud and palpable as Ray Jones went on:

The audience didn’t need any priming from Ray Jones this time as they roared him the line:

It’s an affirmation, Sara thought; it’s a declaration of class solidarity; it’s a tribal anthem; it’s a credo; it’s a social statement at the bedrock of self-image and belonging, and I have to remember this for the piece for Trend. This is who we are; that’s what these people are singing, and we’re all here together, and there’s no strangers to laugh at us or look down their noses. This is who we are.

Meantime, Ray Jones had gone on into the bridge, and Sara’s foot was tapping along with the beat:

Half the audience was clapping along with the song now, and Sara had to resist the impulse to do the same. Ray Jones, grinning, nodding, pounding his own left foot on the stage floor, drove them all into the peroration:

Everybody bellowed it out:

Grinning, winking, Ray Jones side-talked the mike:

Everybody:

Ray Jones:

There ain’t nothin else to do—

Everybody, including (to her utter astonishment) Sara:

Cheering, rousing, standing ovation. Openmouthed, amazed, Sara turned to stare at Yosemite Sam, and he grinned at her and winked.