So I’ve been sharing a lot of excerpts from Hometown, so I thought it was time to share a few scenes from my other stories. This one is from The Truth of Rock and Roll. It gives us a look at Jenny and Johnny, Our Heroine and Our…Protagonist (he isn’t Our Hero yet), the ferocity of their love, and the power of rock and roll magic.
*
“I was in the locker room. Somebody’s transistor radio was playing Buffalo Springfield: stop, children, what’s that sound…I should have taken the warning, but I wasn’t thinking about anything but Mrs. Greer’s math test and maybe lunch. As a result, I was caught completely off-guard when somebody spun me around and slammed me up against the lockers.”
“It was Brett Snow, captain of the football team, and for a moment I was worried that he wanted to have some words with me about what I’d said to Mona. They had an on-again, off-again, high-drama sort of thing going on, and stomping on some twerp who’d mouthed off to her would be a perfect make-up present. But it turned out he had a different bone to pick with me that day.”
“ ‘I’ve been hearing things lately, dweeb,’ he said to me, getting right up in my face. ‘Things I don’t like.”
“ ‘What have you been hearing?’ I asked, trying to keep calm. The situation was ridiculous – I mean, we were both fresh from the shower and still wrapped in our towels – but it was also pretty damn serious. Brett had put people in the hospital and gotten away with it because of who he was, who his dad was, and who his victims were. He didn’t have that last advantage against me, which was why I was still upright, but the situation could still go bad.”
“ ‘I hear you’re spending a lot of time with that trailer trash redbush…you know…what’s her name…Ginny? Janey?’ “
“ ‘Jenny,’ I volunteered.”
“ ‘That’s the one!’ he said. Most people smack their foreheads when they say something in that tone. Brett smacked mine. ‘Now, see, I have a problem with that.’ “
“I started to ask why, but he put a finger to my lips. ‘Shoosh shoosh shoosh shoosh shoosh! I’ll explain everything. I know you’re not too smart.”
“His friends snickered at that while my friends looked anxious. He made a big show of thinking what to say next, stroking his chin, drawing out our fear of what was coming.”
“ ‘It’s like this, dweeb,’ he said at last. ‘I don’t like you. I pretty much think you’re a pussy.’ “
“His friends snickered again, and mine tensed up. I learned later that they had no idea what to do. They had no chance of stopping Brett physically, especially not with his buddies there, and we all had that stupid high school code of honor where you don’t ever call in the teachers. Mostly, they were hoping that Brett would decide talking was enough.”
“Brett ignored it all and kept talking: ‘And normally, I wouldn’t care where you go to get your little dinky wet. But whether you like it or not – and I know I don’t – you’re one of us.’ He waved at his buddies. ‘You’re from the Heights. We can’t have some bitch from the Mill Road trailer park thinking she’s as good as we are, which means…’ he leaned in close then, putting his face in my face and his forearm across my throat. ‘…we can’t have one of our own acting like she is. So you just drop your little whore, and you do it today, and nobody has to get hurt. You get me?’ “
“I nodded as best I could with his arm jammed up under my chin.”
“ ‘Good.’ He let me go and turned away, and I could breathe again, and if I’d been smart I would have kept my mouth shut. But…I don’t know…the Stones were singing Street Fighting Man, and my mouth was moving before I could stop it.”
“ ‘She’s not a whore,’ I said.”
“Brett stopped. Everyone in the locker room, his buddies and mine, looked at me like I was nuts. Then they looked scared – my buddies, yeah, but some of his, too, at least the ones who weren’t all excited that they were about to see a beating. They knew this one was gonna be bad.”
“For his part, Brett didn’t get excited. He didn’t snarl or threaten or ask what I’d said to him. He just sighed and shook his head and said: ‘And I was going to let you live.’ “
“He turned and started for me, and I was just raising my hands to shield my face when someone grabbed him from behind. One arm, slimmer and smoother than you expect to see in the boys’ locker room, wrapped around him while the other slipped under his towel. He stopped dead in his tracks, but it was too late: the arm under his towel tensed, his eyes just bugged right out of his head, and he started to make these rusty, breathless noises that probably wanted to be screams.”
I winced. It was forty years later and the bastard deserved it, but I still winced.
“He sank down to his knees, but Jenny followed him down, not letting go until he hit the floor. Then she straightened up and calmly brushed off her hands as ol’ Brett curled up on the floor like a shrimp and sobbed.”
“Of course it was Jenny. Who else would have the balls?”
“ ‘He’s right, you know,’ she said to him, calm as if we’d been discussing song titles. ‘I’m not a whore. Whores fuck for money. If that was me, then you’d actually have a chance.’ Then she stepped over Brett, hooked her fingers into my towel, pulled me close and kissed me. ‘What I do with you, baby, I do because you do it so fine.’ “
*
“…of course,” he finished, “That’s when Coach Moore came running in shouting ‘Break it up’.”
“Of course it was,” I smirked. Wasn’t it always? Then he made it stop being funny.
“To this day, I fully believe that he was there the whole time, and only interfered when Brett started to lose. Jenny got a week’s suspension, and I might have too if there hadn’t been a dozen witnesses that I didn’t ‘get in a fight’ so much as ‘get tossed around’. Brett didn’t miss a single game. And that’s how things worked in my hometown.”
I was outraged, and started to say so, but he was already past that, moving on to the real point of the story: “I asked her later how she knew I was in trouble, and at first she tried to say ‘How’d Wayne Cochran know his baby’s in Heaven? Some things you just know, baby.’ But I pressed her a little bit, and she finally said ‘Someone was playing a radio in our locker room, too, and the song told me.’ That was all she would say, and I didn’t understand until much later.”
*
To read the rest of the story of Jenny and Johnny, head on over to Amazon and pick up your on copy of The Truth of Rock and Roll in Kindle or paperback, or read it for free on Kindle Unlimited. And while you’re there, check out the rest of the library!