Flying to America Read Free Page A

and reads off the orders to the counterman there, and the counterman says, “You with the band?” and the go-for says, “Yup,” succinct and not putting too fine a point on it. Meanwhile the ushers have arrived, all high-school girls who are members of the Daughters of the Mystic Shrine Auxiliary, wearing white blouses and blue miniskirts, with a red sash slung across their breasts tied at the hip, a badge of office. These, the flower of Rogers’ young girls, all go backstage to look at the musicians, and this is their privilege, because the performance doesn’t begin foranother hour, and they stand around looking at the musicians, and the musicians look back at them, and certain thoughts push their way into all of the minds gathered there, under the worklights, but then are pushed out again, because there is music to be performed this night! and one of the amplifiers has just blown its slo-blo fuse, and nobody can remember where the spare fuses were packed, and also the microphones provided by the Temple are freaking out, if one can say that about a microphone, and in addition the second band’s drummer discovers that his heads are soggy (probably a result of that situation outside Tulsa, where the bridge was out and the station wagon more or less forded the river) but luckily he has brought along a hot plate to deal with this sort of contingency, and he plugs it in and begins toasting his heads, to bring them back to the right degree of brashness for the performance. And now the first people are filling up the seats, out in front of the curtain, some of them sitting in seats that are better, strictly speaking, than those they had paid for, in the hope that the real owners of the seats will not show up, having been detained by a medical emergency. All of the musicians take turns in looking out over the auditorium through a hole in the closed curtain, counting the house and looking for girls who are especially beautiful. And now the m.c. arrives, a very jovial man in a big Western hat, such as the Stetson company has stopped making, and he goes around shaking hands with everybody, cutting up old touches, and the musicians tolerate this, because it is part of their life. And now everybody is tuning up, and you hear parts of lots of different songs, fragments clashing with each other, because each musician has a different favorite bit that he likes to tune up with, although sometimes two musicians will start in on the same piece at the same time, because they are thinking alike, at that moment. And now the hall is filling up with people who are well- or ill-dressed, according to the degree that St. Pecula has smiled upon them, and the Daughters of the Mystic Shrine are outside, with their programs, which contain advertisements from the Bart Lumber Yard, and the Sons and Daughters of I Will Arise, and the House of Blue Lights, and the Sunbeam Vacuum Cleaner Company, and the Okay Funeral Home.A man comes backstage with a piece of paper on which is written the order in which the various performers will appear. The leaders of the various groups drift over to this man and look at his piece of paper, to see what spot on the bill has been given to each band, while the bandsmen talk to each other, in enthusiastic or desultory fashion, according to their natures. “Where’d you git that shirt?” “Took it off a cop in Texarkana.” “How much you give for it?” “Dollar and a half.” And now everybody is being careful not to drink too much, because drinking too much slows down your attack, and if there is one thing you don’t want in this kind of situation it is having your attack slowed down. Of course some people are into drinking and smoking a lot more before they play, but that’s another idea, and now the audience on the other side of the closed curtain is a loud presence, and everyone has the feeling of something important about to happen, and the first band to perform gets into position, with the three guitar