Salt of the king, p.5
Salt of the King, page 5
Perry pulled from his pocket their most precious possession—a copy of the janitor’s master key. The key was the biggest secret among the students in the Duro High drama department. During the Spring semester, one of the boys had managed to get ahold of the custodian’s keys one day and took them to a hardware store during lunch. He took the master key off its ring, placed a small piece of masking tape over the engraved words FCISD PROPERTY—DO NOT DUPLICATE, and then had the key copied. The man at the key-grinding machine never did more than glance at it. By the end of the day, the custodian, who thought he had lost his keys and was dreading telling the school administration, found them on the floor of one of the mop closets.
Phew, he thought. Got to be more careful.
Andrew Waylan, one of the rising seniors, had claimed the right to hold the key and doled it out judiciously to various school marauders after extracting a promise they wouldn’t leave a trace—and wouldn’t rat on him if they were caught. So, a few times during the semester, some copies of upcoming tests were spirited from classrooms, a handful of snacks were pilfered from the cafeteria, and, in one case, a trio of fat gerbils was set loose in the library. But any plans for obvious theft or vandalism were vetoed by Andrew, who took his master-key responsibilities seriously. Too many kids knew about it already, and they must not make the school staff suspicious.
Tonight, Andrew had allowed young Perry to borrow it for a secret mission to contact the Other Side.
As the two girls stood in the shadows, Perry unlocked the door and peeked inside.
“The coast is clear,” he said. “Come on,” and they all went in.
The hallway was lit only by EXIT signs and a small red light on the fire alarm.
“Just go all the way down the hall to the theater,” said Perry.
“God, this is creepy!” said Chase. The two senior girls and one sophomore boy walked as quietly as they could down the small hallway, then turned right on the main hall with its trophy cases and motivational posters.
When they got to the auditorium, Perry unlocked the main door. The dark theater was even creepier than the hallway. With its high, dark ceiling, every tiny sound they made echoed in the cavernous space. The air vents sounded like supernatural whispering. They walked up the left side aisle, feeling their way along the wall.
“Let’s go up on stage,” said Perry. They went up the side stairs onto the main stage, where the curtains were all pulled back and up out of the way. Along the edge of the stage, glow tape had been placed to prevent accidents during scene changes.
“Why didn’t we bring a flashlight?” whined Beverly.
“Because people might see the light through the windows and think we’re burglars.”
He looked at his watch, and he could just make out the time from the glowing green tips of the minute and hour hands. “We shouldn’t really try this ’til later. It’s not even nine o’clock yet.”
“I don’t want to wait,” said Chase.
“Me neither,” said Beverly. “I’m weirded out. Let’s hurry this up.”
“You can’t hurry something like this,” said Perry. “That’s not how it works. We have to just sit quietly and wait. Clear your mind, so you’re receptive to the spirit world.”
“Oh, come on,” said Chase. “That’s such bullshit.”
“Be a doubter if you want, but I’ve heard the more you are open to the idea, the more she’s likely to reveal herself. Some people saw her last year.”
“Y’all, I really don’t like this,” said Beverly. “I think I’m going to go back and wait in the car.”
“No,” said Perry. “We have to have at least three people. That’s what I read. To make a circle.” He sat down on the stage next to the glow tape. “Now, Bev, you sit over here to my right. You’re righthanded, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then sit on my right,” said Perry. “Chase, you’re left-handed, so sit on my left.”
“What difference does it make?” asked Chase.
“That’s just what I read,” said Perry. “It’s supposed to make a complete spirit circle.”
“Whatever.”
The three students sat on the stage.
“Now, hold hands,” said Perry, “and be quiet. Clear your mind.”
For several minutes, they sat, trying not to fidget.
Suddenly, Chase breathed in sharply. “I heard something!” she whispered. “I think it was somebody walking!”
“It’s probably just the air conditioner,” whispered Perry. “There’s nobody here but us. Nobody from this world. Now, be quiet, and in a few minutes, we’ll call to her.”
“I don’t like that part,” said Beverly.
“We just have to let her know it’s okay to reveal herself.”
“Oh, God, this is such bullshit,” said Chase, but she gripped their hands.
They sat still. They heard various small sounds, the clicks and thumps of an old building, idling and cooling in the night air. A couple of times, the girls thought they might have heard quiet footsteps. After a couple of minutes, Perry spoke in a low voice.
“Helen … Helen … We are open to your presence.”
“Such bullshit,” whispered Chase.
“This is how you do it,” whispered Perry. “Now speak along with me.” He gripped both girls’ hands tightly and began again, louder. “Helen … Helen … We are open to your presence. If you are here, make yourself known.”
“I don’t like it, either,” whispered Beverly.
“Shut up, both of you,” whispered Perry. “This is serious.” He raised his voice more, so that it echoed a little bit in the auditorium. “Helen … We are your friends. We are not those who hurt you. Helen, make yourself known to us.” Perry shifted his sitting position on the floor. “Now, come on, guys, let’s speak together. Just call her. Say, ‘Helen.’ Come on. Say it with me. ‘Helen … Helen … Helen.’”
The girls reluctantly joined in the incantation.
“Helen … Helen … Helen …”
Chase squirmed. “Perry, I think—”
Suddenly, there was a crash, as if something had been kicked over, coming from somewhere back in the wings. Both girls screamed involuntarily.
“My God!” said Beverly. “What was that?”
“Listen!” said Perry. “I think we’re making contact. Now do this with me. Helen … Helen … Helen …”
From someplace deep backstage came the voice of a young girl.
“I’m so cold … so cold. Help me … I’m so cold …”
Chase screamed sharply, and Beverly shouted, “Oh God!”
“That’s it, I’m out of here!” yelled Chase. She got up and headed for the side of the stage, stumbling down the stairs and running up the center aisle. Beverly jumped up and followed. Chase got to the main auditorium door and blew through it, with Beverly rapidly closing in. Perry heard the clack-clack-clack of their footsteps as the girls ran down the hall. He climbed down off the stage and hurried after them.
When Perry got outside the building, both girls were in Beverly’s car. The engine was running.
“Wait!” Perry yelled. He ran up to the car, out of breath, and opened the door. “I have to go back in! Wait for me!”
“Oh my God, WHY!?” screamed Chase.
“I didn’t lock the auditorium,” said Perry. “I have to do it, or they’ll know we were there.”
He trotted back to the door and went inside, then hurried down the hall to the auditorium door. He pulled it open and leaned inside.
“Andrew!” he called.
There was a burst of laughter from the front of the room. Andrew Waylan appeared out of the dark, along with his friend Randall and Randall’s little sister, who was in ninth grade.
“That was GREAT!” said Andrew. “They practically peed their pants! You did really good with that séance shit. I loved it! I thought I screwed up when I knocked over that ladder, but it just added to the effect. Amy, you were fantastic! ‘I’m so coooold.’ That was perfect. Just perfect.”
“Can we go now?” asked Amy. “I’m hungry.”
“We have to wait for them to leave,” said Andrew. “Perry, you go outside and tell them you saw Helen. Act like you’re locking the door, but give me the key right now.”
Perry handed over the master key. He could still hear the two boys laughing and talking as he ran down the hall and through the outside door. He pushed the door shut and faked a locking motion. He sprinted to Beverly’s car and dived past Chase into the back seat.
“I saw her!” he said. “Oh, my God! I don’t know why I did it, but I opened the auditorium door before I locked it,” he panted. “There was a girl standing in the middle of the stage, I swear to God. She was all in white! I just locked the damn door and got out of there! Oh, God! Drive! Let’s get away from here!”
Beverly revved up the Comet, and they tore across the school parking lot. As the car entered the street, the spinning tires bounced against the curb. When they came to the first intersection, Beverly paused only long enough to make sure nobody was coming, then gunned through the red light.
CHAPTER 5
The Hits Keep Coming
Allen Wallace stared at the tape machine on his desk, sipping his drink, rubbing his wrist. He should listen to that demo one more time, but he was afraid it would bring him down even more. The TEAC four-track hummed. The quarter-inch reel of tape JJ Johns had given him was treaded onto the machine. Wallace took another sip and shuddered.
He was drinking scotch that somebody had given him last Christmas. He kept it deep in a desk drawer and indulged in it only once in a while. Allen didn’t particularly like scotch, unless it was really dry and not very smoky, and this one was too strong by fifty yards. But he wanted a drink and had nothing better, so he diluted the dark scotch with water from the bathroom sink and sipped. Maybe he should have another Equanil, which his doctor told him to take for anxiety, morning and evening, on an empty stomach. He’d already taken his second pill for the day, but he was allowed as many as four a day if he needed them. He thought a moment, then fished the pill bottle out of his desk and flicked one of the bitter white pills into his mouth and washed it down with a shot of scotch. He was running a little low on pills, but there was another bottle at home.
When he found himself in this sort of mood, brooding about all the things that had never worked in his life—his two marriages, his daughter who wouldn’t speak to him—Allen turned to his tapes. The studio shelves held at least a hundred and fifty reels of tape in different sizes, including twenty-five completed demos and many more masters. Some of them were so old they had been produced by Roger Best, the studio’s original owner, back when Allen was an assistant engineer. The very best of them, the ones most intimate to him, were stored in the echo chamber, where the temperature stayed cave-like.
The studio may have been named for its original owner, but the name was appropriate, because something about this far-from-everywhere location brought out the best work in musicians, in Allen’s view. “Must be something in the water out here,” Roger Best liked to say. It was more likely that this dreary industrial warehouse sitting on the east side of a huge salt flat simply took away all other distractions, let the artists stay focused. Allen had a few opportunities over the years to move the studio closer to town, but he turned them all down. Out here was where he did his best work, and others did, too.
Over the years, a few recordings had found their way onto vinyl, pressed and shipped off to radio stations and music promoters around the country. Almost none of them had ever seen the light of day—consigned to studio round files as soon as they were received. Only a few had ever been played on the air, and only a tiny fraction—fewer than a dozen—had been released by a major record label.
Well, one, mostly. The other eight were minor efforts that slightly cracked the Billboard, Country, or Gospel charts, then fell off quickly. “Bettie Said She Loves Me” was Allen’s only bona fide hit as producer. For a while, the song had paid the bills and, very briefly, made Rick Watson a star. Watson wasn’t the most talented musician Allen had ever recorded, not by a long shot, but he was easygoing, professional in the studio, and willing to take guidance.
After the GoldTone label signed Watson, and the song climbed into the top ten for a couple of weeks, Allen never expected to see the young rockabilly singer again. But six months later, Watson was back in Duro asking Allen for help with a follow-up. The two had ground out many late nights at Best Studios, first hashing together the tune, then recording it. This time, the arrangement was better, and the session musicians were sharper. Allen had written most of the music but didn’t ask for cowriting credit.
“Bettie’s Coming Home” was pretty good—certainly better than its predecessor. It debuted at number eighty-eight in the spring of 1963, then dropped off the charts a week later. Undeterred, Rockin’ Rick Watson had returned to Allen twice more that year, and together, they had written and built a couple of very decent tunes, searching for the secret ingredients that got a song noticed. Demos were mailed out by the score, but the label declined to promote the records, and they dropped Rick at the end of his contract, just as the Beatles were dealing a death blow to rockabilly. The last Allen had heard from him, Rick was playing Nashville lounges on weekends, working in his father’s furniture factory, and hoping for a comeback.
Except for a couple of modest regional successes and a few gospel recordings, that was the story of Allen Wallace. He was a more-than-decent record producer, with a good sense of what made a pop song work, but what Allen excelled at was creating legend. Through some sneaky self-promotion and the judicious planting of rumors, he had managed to prevent his name from being forgotten—not easy in this business.
If the truth were to be told, Roy Orbison had never set foot in World Famous Best Studios. There were no mysterious lost demos, though Allen never explicitly denied their existence. Buddy Holly had never stopped by for late-night sessions with Sonny Curtis. The great Freddie Fender had never come out to Duro after his release from Angola Prison Farm to record a follow-up to “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights.” But, if people thought he had … Well, who was Allen Wallace to disagree?
Many, many artists—good, fair, and awful—had come through these doors over the years. And now, more and more, feeling the approach of twilight, Allen sat alone, listening to tapes of so many sessions that should have been hits.
And then there was Mabel.
She was a brilliant, dynamic singer. And it could have worked. Back when they were both younger and Allen was happy … It really could have worked.
Allen shook his head to clear the thoughts. He took another sip of scotch, then reached down into the desk drawer, fished out the bottle of Cutty, and splashed a couple of dollops into his glass. He hated the sight of an empty glass. He considered adding more tap water, but his taste buds were now sufficiently numb. The smoky flavor wouldn’t bother him.
Okay, he had to listen to JJ Johns’s demo again but dreaded it. The working title of the song was “Earth Is Crying,” and it was the sort of overblown, heavyhanded, relevant-message drivel that made Allen cringe. The demo was a full six minutes, way too long for a pop single. JJ’s mournful, pleading voice gave him goosebumps for the wrong reason: It sounded both angry and constipated.
Besides JJ’s guitar, there was Prensky’s Rhodes electric piano, much too sharp and intrusive, a bored session drummer going through the motions, and two female backup singers who didn’t seem to be listening to each other. And these guys wanted to record the song with a symphony orchestra? Jesus, what ever happened to subtlety?
Allen rewound the tape on the old machine, then hesitated. Maybe it would sound better played through the main console in the control room. He usually played the quarter-inch tape machine through a little practice amp attached to a small RCA speaker salvaged from an old radio. It wasn’t a great set-up, and the sound was flat, but the equipment fit on his desk. After thinking it over a few seconds, Allen unplugged the reel-to-reel. Though it wasn’t easy—since the accident, Allen’s right hand had been very weak—he picked up the bulky machine and lugged it into the main control room. He plugged it into the forty-watt amp driving two Altec nearfield monitors.
It took some huffing and crawling around on his old knees, but Allen managed to get the system set up. He returned to his office to retrieve his drink, closed the control room door, turned on the big amplifier, punched the PLAY button, and scooted back a couple of feet to put himself in the center of the sound field. He massaged his wrist and listened.
At least JJ’s guitar sounded a lot better, and the piano wasn’t as piercing. He listened to the earnest lyrics:
The Earth will turn, with or without us
She will never hate or ever doubt us
We don’t respect her, we’re not even trying
But listen to her, friends, the Earth … the Earth is crying
Don’t think about the dumb words. Just try and visualize the song. Allen turned up the volume and closed his eyes. Okay, it’s not awful. Maybe a little slow. The tune is pretty good, actually, just not great. What can I do to make it great? Allen listened to imaginary tracks in his head. What we need after the first chorus is a bass with a lot of bottom, plus another guitar for support. Then, well, maybe Prensky was right—some violins and violas right on top and some kind of deep drums—not timpani, surely, not a full orchestra, but definitely a bigger sound. It was time to outfit the large room.
Allen picked up a pad of paper and jotted notes.
Get the sound big. Focus on chorus. (Maybe chorus first?) Tweak lyrics. Drop the first verse or rewrite. Drum intro?
He was glad he’d taken the trouble to play the demo through the big speakers. So what if ninety-nine percent of their target audience would hear “Earth Is Crying” through rattly four-inch speakers in their Ford Pintos? You make a song from the top down. Worry about the kids and their little transistor radios later. Get a good-sounding mix first.
