Petrogypsies (29 page)

Everybody in the place was feeling so great it was hard for me to hang onto being miserable. Somehow I managed to, though. I figured I’d seen about as much happy as I could stand for the time being, so I quietly unplugged and slipped away.

* * *

Jon-Tim’s was almost empty, and the band was on break. I ordered me two beers at the same time and disposed of the first one in a gulp.

Jon-Tim jumped up on the stage and spoke into the microphone. “Thought I’d let y’all know. A friend in the press-box just called me. Final score: Aggies 42, Tea-sippers 17. We kicked ass!” Everybody in the room started banging on their tables.

“Yayyy!

“Gig ’em Aggies!”

“TU sucks!”

Billy Bob had it all now.

I was slumped back in my chair with my eyes closed when somebody tapped on my shoulder. It was Muddy, with Willie smiling beside him.

“Hey, Henry Lee. We’re ‘bout to go back on. How about sitting in?”

I took a sip of my beer. “Aw … thanks, but I ain’t in the best mood of my life. I’d hate to bring you guys down.”

“He say he got the blues,” Willie whispered in Muddy’s ear, like I had spoke a foreign language and he was translating.

“Well, well, well,” Muddy said. “You know the best thing to do when you got the blues?”

I thought about what the chief said to me the first night he taught me about the blues. I smiled feebly. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Come on. We’ll play slow.”

* * *

It hurt, but it was somehow sweet, too. For a half a dozen songs, I poured it out through the strings of Muddy’s black Strat. Like Star had done through her violin, I guess. Toward the end of the set, we did a slow, grinding version of
You Can’t Lose What You Never Had
. That sure said it all for me. The band laid back and gave me plenty of time to stretch out on a solo. I got lost in it for a while, maybe five or ten minutes, playing with my eyes closed, half-turned toward the back of the stage.

When I came back from wherever I had gone, I realized that Jon-Tim’s had practically filled up, and everybody in the place was on their feet whistling and clapping.

Then I noticed that Star was halfway down the stairway at the far end of the room, and she was clapping, too. Stevie and the blonde I had seen him with at the amphitheatre was a few steps down from her. Matter of fact, the entire crews of Sprocket, Big Red, and Lady Jane were scattered around the area. Doc and Sabrina stepped out of Sprocket’s mouth at the head of the stairs. Doc was carrying the biggest gold trophy I ever saw. He looked at me and held it up, smiling.

Stevie was still grinning as hugely as he had been when last I saw him. He headed across the floor toward me. Then his face went all grim, and he detached himself from the blonde. Billy Bob and Ugly Number One, the one who had kicked me in the stomach, had stepped in front of them.

I looked around the room some more. Half of the new people in Jon-Tim’s, maybe forty or fifty husky boys, had the skin-head haircuts of Kaydets. About a dozen of the others still had their helmets on. The Aggie football team had come to celebrate their victory. You could tell they was in a serious partying mood because they started breaking furniture and throwing beer mugs as soon as the song finished. Muddy and the band was in for a long night. I decided I’d get the ball rolling myself.

I carefully unstrapped Muddy’s ax and handed it to him. “Thanks, Muddy. If the band knows any fight songs, now would be a good time.” I felt like I was floating on the wind toward Billy Bob and Stevie, my feet barely touching the floor. Both my hands balled into fists. I realized I was about to do something I would muchly regret, and I didn’t give a damn. I might as well go out with a bang.

Billy Bob said something to the blonde, then raised his hand, like he had the night before when he slapped Stevie. Stevie flinched back. The blonde grabbed Billy Bob’s arm and said something to him. She looked mad. Billy Bob patted Stevie softly on the cheek, then turned away and said something to Ugly Number One. They both laughed. Stevie grabbed Billy Bob by the elbow and spun him around.

They stared at each other, then Billy Bob smiled mockingly and grabbed Stevie’s shirt front. The little blonde said something again, looking even madder, but Billy Bob ignored her. I was less than half a dozen steps away by then, still gaining speed. None of them had seen me. I was going to give ol’ Billy Bob a
big
surprise.

Stevie pulled free, tearing his shirt in the process, drew a knobby fist back, and threw a punch that knocked Billy Bob onto his back on the table behind him.

For a second, the whole place went so quiet that you could hear the tinkle as bouncing pieces of shattered beer mugs hit the floor. Billy Bob shook his head, tried to sit up, and fell off the table.

Then all hell broke loose.

Athletic growls erupted from the throats of all the Kaydets. They surged toward Stevie. I threw a body block on about three of them at once. When I climbed to my feet, Stevie had leaped at Billy Bob, who’d managed to stand up. Stevie climbed Billy Bob like a tree. I lurched over and cannonballed into Ugly Number One, going back to the floor with him. We rolled over and over, pummelling each other wildly. I didn’t feel no pain at all. I barely noticed when I was torn away from him by the crowd that swirled around us.

It quickly sorted out to being the gypsies, who were pumped up from winning the Grand Prix, against the football team, who were pumped up from winning the big game. Nobody was on the sidelines of this game. Most of the football team had brought dates, and them and the casing gypsies went at it, too.

The band struck up a tune with a heavy, jumpy beat. I snorted when I recognized it. It was called I’m Ready. A couple of the lines go:

I’m drinkin’ TNT, I’m smokin’ dynamite,

I hope some schoolboy starts a fight.

Because I’m ready, ready as anybody can be.

I am ready for you, I hope you’re ready for me.

The blues ain’t nothing but the truth.

A few minutes into it, while I was putting the hurt to some football hero with more muscles than coordination, I glanced over to see Stevie shuffling around in a professional boxer’s stance like you would see on the Gillette Saturday Night Boxing on tee-vee. Then he waded into Billy Bob again, hitting him fast enough to blur, fists alternating like pistons. Billy Bob tried to push him away, and Stevie joyfully grabbed his wrist and invented some kind of judo throw that landed Billy Bob on his head. Stevie ducked as two full whiskey bottles flew through the air and crashed into the wall next to him.

About then, I realized he had pretty much gotten even with Billy Bob for both of us. The gypsy crews seemed to be holding their own against the football team. Everybody was generally having a great time blowing off steam.

The fun went out of it all of a sudden. I wasn’t part of all this any more. I’d be just a fading memory to all these people by tomorrow night.

The hell with it.

I was near a stairway, so I slogged up to the top and circled the rim until I got to Sprocket. Sonny and Maureen was perched on his forehead, rocking back and forth and being entertained by the post-game, post-concert celebration. I patted him on the nose and turned for one last look below before going inside and starting to pack. Sprocket’s tongue surprised me by snaking between my legs from behind, then humping up to lift me higher.

Before I could climb down, high-pressure water jetted from the ragged orifice at the end of Sprocket’s tongue. It knocked down dozens of people in the pit. Sprocket chuckled and hummed to himself. The birds cackled and ruffled their wings, enjoying themselves hugely.

I figured enough drenching might stop the fight, which would be good for Star, so I didn’t discourage Sprocket having his fun. Stupidly, I had been worrying about her fighting in her delicate condition. But that was none of my business either, anymore.

The jet trickled to a stop after only a few seconds.

“What’s the matter, boy? Keep it up.” I looked back as Sprocket started to mutter unhappily. His water bladder must have been almost empty when he started, and he had run it dry.

I spotted Star and Sabrina on the far side of Jon-Tim’s, right past the bar. They had laid on their sides four of the long tables that would normally seat a group of eight or ten people and wedged them all together to form a barricade in the corner. Behind it, they sat on the floor, backs against the wall, and chatted casually as if nothing was going on. They had both apparently decided to sit out the festivities this time around. Good for them. I felt relieved, not having to worry about Star.

As I watched, a couple of Aggie girls tried to move the tables to get to them, but the tables were heavy, and Star and Sabrina had interlocked some chair-legs with the table legs to hold them all together. The Aggie girls smashed half a dozen of their own chairs to kindling before giving up and getting involved otherwise in the whirling riot. All they had done was make the barricade more bulky. Three or four bottles of liquor smashed against the barricade, but they didn’t get through, either.

I lost interest. Time to go start packing. In the morning I’d sell my shares in the Sprocket Limited Partnership, find me a bus headed in the right direction, and get the hell out of Dodge.

I tried to climb down again, but Sprocket’s tongue dipped and carried me to the small brick building a few yards away. The door in front of me said GENTLEMEN. None of those here right now. Sprocket’s tongue-tip nudged a six-inch stainless steel elbow coming out of the ground and going through the wall into the bathroom.

He nudged it again, and I got the idea.

“Yeah, there’s water in there, but we can’t get to it.”

He hummed uncertainly. The elbow ended in big flanges mated to the rest of the pipe by one-inch hexhead nuts and bolts. They looked new enough to not be rusted together, so I probably could find me a crescent wrench or a socket and open them if I really wanted to.

“Nope, buddy. Forget it. I’m retirin’. Besides, way my luck is running, I’d likely get busted for vandalism or something. You and the birds just take it easy and watch the rest of the fight. Meantime, how about opening up and letting me in?”

I petted him sadly for a few seconds, while the birds loomed over me. If Sprocket got well, I’d probably never see him again after tomorrow. If he didn’t, it would be good to have him pastured with us, but it couldn’t ever be the way it was. Both of us would be broken.

I was inside his mouth, and it was closing, when the screaming started. Mind, there had been a fair amount of noise, including high-pitched shrieks, all along. But this was different. A lot of people were panicking. I stepped back outside and looked in the pit.

The far third of the room was a wall of fire.

God knows how it started. A lot of flammable sprits had been liberated from their bottles and splashed all over the place, on the wooden furniture and the wooden paneling, not to mention soaking into the sawdust that was inches thick on the floor in places. Before the fight started, every table had on it a candle in a red glass vase. All it would take would be for one of those to shatter into a pool of whiskey.

But it had gotten out of control with unbelievable quickness.

People fought to get to the foot of the stairs leading to the surface. So many shoved, or slipped and fell, that they were completely jammed up. The college boys struggled to get to their dates. Half a dozen gypsies, among them Doc and Razer, had taken off their jackets and were futilely trying to slap out the flames with them.

My heart lurched when I realized why. Most of the people on the floor of Jon-Tim’s place had stairways that they could get up. The fire was scaring them, but it was obvious they were going to escape.

But Star and Sabrina were trapped with no stairway, and the flames feeding on their barricade leaped higher than any others.

I could barely make out their shapes as the smoke grew thicker. They had moved back against the wall.

Stevie dragged a table forward. Him and Razer and Doc ran through fire and tried to use the table as a battering ram, but the other tables were wedged together too solidly. After a few seconds they were driven back by the heat. Stevie dropped to the floor and rolled until he killed the fire in his clothes.

I stood there like a fool. But Sprocket knew what to do. We held fire-control drills at least once a month on location.

His tongue slapped around the six-inch elbow. He grunted, and the pipe snapped with a sound like an arm-bone fracturing. The elbow came loose, with almost a dozen feet of pipe pulling free of the ground. He had broken it off down at the buried main. Water sluggishly welled up from the ground.

“All right! Get that water, Sprocket!” He stuck his tongue-tip a few inches into the hole and started to suck.

In a few seconds I knew that he wasn’t getting a tenth of the water he needed. There wasn’t enough pressure to feed it to him at a high rate, and most of it was migrating into the surrounding earth even before it got to the surface.

Jon-Tim’s place would burn down before he was refilled.

There was only one thing to do. I was afraid it wouldn’t work, but I had to try, anyway. I gripped his tongue and pulled it out of the hole. Sprocket blurted in surprise, but I just stood there for a few seconds holding it loosely in my hands. I stroked it as soothingly as I could, then I carried it back to the hole and started feeding it in.