Chapter 14: An Old Side-B Song

By Allen Frost


George pushed through the crowded Lucky Note. It resembled a subway terminal at rush hour some holiday night, people standing in the rumble and haze. The Cornelius Barter Quintet was done and standing around a pillar talking with Sam Samsara—the grin spread on his face looked like a carved and painted mask. Smoke from cigarettes made a fog, everyone was talking and Symphony Sid boomed platters from big speakers. The scene was a lot like outside George realized on his maze way over to Sam. He supposed the fog was in here too, poured in through the door and windows.
Sam was handing Cornelius an ornate oblong wooden box. Japanese characters skirled around its five sides. George hated to interrupt him to tell him about the car, but it turned out he didn’t have to.
“Excuse me,” Sam added quickly, “Can you please accept this award from our government.” He held another hinged wooden box, smaller, opened to show a gold sun medal with red and white ribbon attached.
Cornelius put his hand on his head, “Wow…” he said.
All at once, the music stopped and a microphone asked, “Will the owner of the silver land yacht get it out of the alley. Or else it will be towed… By a couple of elephants if that’s what it takes…” The music cut back in.
Sam bowed, flustered, passed the musician the medal and eased away. George followed in the path Sam broke to the exit.
The announcer had the misfortune to stop the music a last time, “If you got a greyhound bus for a car, I’ve got news for you—it’s breaking the law to park in an alley.” That was all he managed before Sam reached a straight arm over the blue counter and chopped him. The monitor jolted just enough to start running the jazz again. Like a movie, everything continued as before.
George took a passing look at the man sinking with the microphone slowly below the counter. He sighed. There wasn’t much a doctor could do.
The door shoved aside to a midnight of fog. George caught up with Sam stopped at the crunched hull of his car.
“Hmmm…” Sam grunted. He ran his fingers over the crushed metal topographically. He regarded the skin of it as keenly as a detective, then reaching under the damaged, bolted panel, he pushed the shape of it smooth. He cleared his throat in a satisfied manner and said, “Okay George, let’s go.”
The moon net had trapped more sounds since they were inside the club. Now, amid the echoes of roaming souls with radios and wind sounding slightly out of tune, George felt a howl creep his spine. He wished he could have believed it was only the steam whistle on a lost train, but he knew there was something else out there.
Sam got the monster engine started and George was glad that was all he could hear. He folded his hands on his green splattered suit. At least that was funny, he thought.
“That…” Sam pointed at the Lucky Note, “was great!” Then he sent the wheels spinning. Each cobblestone drummed faster underneath as they picked up speed. “Cornelius Barter!” Sam yelled into the slipstream. “Hey George!” he yanked the wheel hard to get them onto the road.
Good thing the road’s empty, George reflected. Sometimes their way wasn’t so lucky and something would get pulverized. George would try to think of it as the law of nature, survival of the fittest. So the law of the road favored them; they were the biggest thing; a battleship on cement.
“Hey George! Start the record player!”
Below the space where the radio was constantly replaced, George pressed a button. The mahogany panel slipped downwards, cupping a turntable with a record already circling.
“Yeah!” Sam bellowed.
The needle dropped into the scratched groove.
An old Side-B song from years before materialized, when Cornelius Barter and his quartet recorded in a basement near the ocean, beautiful and sad, drums brushing, a muted trumpet, a bass bowed and a celeste. They drove the night around the car. A few minutes long and then the fog was gone. The giant car broke out of its wall to emerge magically flying on wet moonlit sand. The beach ran for miles.
The jukebox dropped down another jazz record ring. Sam mashed his shoe into the pedal and red sparks shot into the clear salt air.
For this feeling shooting on a perfect arrow of high speed with angel music pulling beyond, for finding heaven while you’re still alive, that’s why they were going. Everyday-people were long asleep by now, Sam and George were burning up like a meteor.
Green dials on the dashboard, fiery glows from the stacks cut in the cowl ahead, the car could have roared on and turned around to go back and forth until dawn. Well…gasoline would have run out by then…In any case, it doesn’t matter because there were little shipwrecked fires to avoid.
“What the--?!” The car swerved a bonfire, the left wheel hit into fireworks, another near miss, they were sliding sideways for a second, then Sam had them going okay, a couple seconds of relief, except they didn’t see the snapped ribs of the washed ashore Harry S. Keeler.
George wasn’t aware of what was happening until he could breathe a simple sentence, “What?” He was laying on his side. He could hear the slowly beating heart of the surf. Wake up, he made himself move, he dragged himself out of the flipped on side car. He dug his fingers deeply into the sand every time to pull himself further away…In case it might explode…Slow motion turned into him being able to stand and stumble.
“George!”
Daguerreotype shuffling cards settled on a single picture in three shades of dreamy color, blue and black and white. He heard a name being called. After a while he realized it was his name.
“Ahh…” he replied.
“George!” Sam waded into vision.
“Look…”
The car looked like a rocket smashed on another planet. It was skidded into a mound of pushed sand.
The merry-go-round slowed. George stopped walking. There were burning remains all around them.
Sam Samsara stood there wide as a drive-in movie screen on the beach, his gray suit reflecting all the little bonfires. He moved and they moved like fireflies against the black sky.
“You okay George?”
“Sure, sure Frances,” he grinned, “I could do this in my sleep.”
Before Sam could respond, another voice called, “Hey! Can you give me a hand?!”
George and Sam looked around themselves.
“Down here fellahs!”
There was a man’s face looking up at them. Bits of broken glass twinkled. “I’d sure like to get a hand out of this sand, Mr. Samsara.”
Sam bent down. “Oh, it’s you…” He recognized the soldier from the morning’s shoot.
“Yeah…I was out on the lightship when it blew. Guess I washed up here. Lucky thing the gulls didn’t see me buried like this, huh?” he laughed a wheeze.
Sam brushed the sand around him and dug his hands in to find shoulders. The head rolled against his shoveling hands. Sam let out a scream.
The head screamed too. Staring straight up into the stars, “Where’s the rest of me?!” it yowled.
Sam shot a terrified look at George.
George sat down. “Shhh.” He lay a hand on the head. “I’m a doctor.”
The head’s eyes rolled at George. “Yeah? So—So—Tell me then…How bad is it?”
George scooped the soldier’s head gently between his hands and lifted.